THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


MONOLOGUES 


BT 

RICHARD   MIDDLETON 


NEW  YORK 
MITCHELL  KENNERLEY 

1914 


(All  rights  reserved.) 


CONTENTS 


i 

PAGE 

THE  DECAY  OF  THE  ESSAY   ...  9 


II 
THE  TYRANNY  OF  THE  UGLY  .  .19 

III 
THE  TRUE  BOHEMIA   .       .       .       .       .25 

IV 
DREAMING  AS  AN  ART        .       .  33 


ON  FACTS     .       .       .       .       .       .41 

VI 
ON   KNOWING   LONDON  ...  49 


VII 

THE    I'OET   AND   THE   PEOPLE  .  .  .  .56 

5 


'-  -  F 

_»  *^  < 

LIBRARY 


6  CONTENTS 

VIII 

PAGE 

PENSIONS  FOE  POETS  .       .       .       .       .65 

IX 
HOW  TO  BE  A  POET  .       .       .       .       .74 

X 

TRAITORS   OF   ART  .  .  .  .  .82 

XI 

SUICIDE    AND   THE    STATE 

XII 

THE   AGE    OF   DISENCHANTMENT  .  .  .99 

XIII 
ON    DREAMS        .>..••    107 

XIV 

NEW  YEAR'S  EVE         .....  116 

XV 

WHY   WOMEN   FAIL    IN    ART         ....    124 

XVI 

AN   ELECTION-TIDE   DREAM         .  ..."...  .  .    133 


CONTENTS 


XVII 

PAGE 


THE    NEW    SEX  .... 

XVIII 
ON   EDITORS       ......    152 

XIX 
THE    REVOLT   OF   THE    PHILISTINES        .  .  .    161 

XX 

THE    VIRTUES   OF   GETTING    DRUNK        .  .  .    170 

XXI 

THE    VERDICT   OF   POSTERITY    ....    179 

XXII 
IS   ENGLAND   DECADENT?  ....    188 

XXIII 
UNCOMFORTABLE    SPRING  ....    198 


.    207 


XXV 

THE   POET   WHO   WAS    .  ,    ;  .  .    216 


CONTENTS 


XXVI 

PAOE 

THE   GIFT   OF   APPRECIATION     ,  .   224 


XXVII 
POETS   AND   CRITICS       .....    232 

XXVIII 
MONTJOIE  ......    241 

XXIX 
A   SUMMER   HOLIDAY      .....   251 

XXX 

COMMERCIAL   LITERATURE          .  .  .  .    261 

XXXI 
A   MONOLOGUE   ON   LOVE    SONGS  .  .  .    269 

XXXII 
CONVERSATIONAL   MISERS  .  .  .   279 


Thanks  are  due  to  tlie  Editors  of  "  The  Academy  "  and  "  Vanity 
Fair"  for  permission  to  reprint  most  of  the  essays  in  this  volume. 


MONOLOGUES 

i 

THE    DECAY    OF    THE    ESSAY 

OWING  to  the  general  laxity  with  which  men 
and  women  use  the  language  they  inherit, 
in  the  course  of  years  words  are  apt  to  be 
broadened  and  coarsened  in  their  meaning. 
Striving  against  this  tendency,  every  scrupu- 
lous writer  is  in  danger  of  robbing  words 
of  a  part  of  their  birthright :  through  fear 
of  letting  them  mean  too  much  he  makes 
them  mean  too  little.  Ultimately,  of  course, 
the  popular  meaning  prevails,  and  we  suck 
our  fountain-pens  in  vain  who  seek  to  pre- 
serve a  kind  of  verbal  aristocracy  ;  but  it 
is  a  pleasant  game  while  it  lasts,  and  it  does 
no  one  any  harm. 

For  instance,  there  is  this  word  "  essay." 
It  is  used  to-day  loosely  to  mean  almost  any 


10  MONOLOGUES 

kind  of  prose  article,  especially  when  such 
articles  are  rescued  from  periodical  litera- 
ture and  reprinted  in  book  form.  Mr. 
Chesterton's  twisted  allegories  are  essays, 
and  so  are  Mr.  Lucas's  pleasant  pilferings 
from  queer  books,  and  Mr.  Shaw's  dramatic 
criticisms.  So,  too,  for  that  matter,  are 
Earle's  characters,  and  the  Roger  de  Coverley 
papers,  and  Swinburne's  laudations  of  the 
Elizabethan  dramatists.  Confronted  with 
this  embarrassing  promiscuity,  the  critic  who 
really  wishes  the  word  "  essay "  to  mean 
something  is  forced  to  give  it  a  purely 
arbitrary  meaning,  and  this  I  have  ventured 
to  do  in  choosing  a  title  for  my  lament.  To 
say  that  the  art  of  writing  little  articles  for 
the  newspapers  and  republishing  them  in 
modest  volumes  is  decaying  would  be  absurd  ; 
but  to  say  that  at  the  present  time  very  few 
people  are  trying  to  write  like  Charles  Lamb 
is  patently  true.  To  me,  essays  are  such 
leisurely  expressions  of  a  humane  and  agree- 
able personality  as  we  find  in  the  works  of 
Elia.  They  may  criticize  and  rhapsodize  and 
narrate,  but  the  reader  is  always  conscious 
of  the  individuality  that  controls  the  pen. 


THE   DECAY  OF  THE   ESSAY          11 

A  fit  medium  of  expression  for  tranquil 
minds,  they  reveal  with  a  careless  generosity 
the  mind  emotions  and  placid  processes  of 
thought  that  give  them  birth.  The  delicately- 
flattered  reader  feels  that  the  essayist  is 
guarding  no  Bluebeard's  chamber  of  the 
mind.  As  far  as  the  hospitable  writer  has 
himself  explored  it,  so  far  are  its  dim  corri- 
dors open  to  his  inquiring  eyes. 

For  of  all  forms  of  artistic  expression,  this 
is  the  most  personal  and  self-revealing.  It 
might  be  described  as  the  art  of  expression 
in  dressing-gown  and  carpet-slippers.  A  bad 
man,  if  there  be  any  bad  men,  might  en- 
deavour to  express  a  moment  of  his  criminal 
life  in  a  sonnet  or  a  short  story  or  a 
romance  ;  but  he  would,  I  hope,  think  too 
highly  of  humanity  in  general  to  seek  to 
reflect  it  in  his  own  lost  person.  Yet  this 
is  the  work  of  the  essayist.  "  These  I  fear," 
he  says  with  spirit,  "  are  my  meannesses, 
my  weaknesses,  my  vices  ;  but,  on  the  other 
hand,  I  have,  I  think,  these  trivial  virtues. 
Perhaps  there  are  other  men  like  me  !  "  No 
bad  man  could  write  like  that ;  he  would 
rather  believe  himself  unique  in  his  villainy. 


12  MONOLOGUES 

And  this  brings  me  to  the  quality  that  leads 
men  to  write  essays.  Being  men  of  leisurely 
mind,  it  might  naturally  be  presumed  that 
they  would  be  satisfied  with  dreaming,  and 
that  they  would  leave  the  drudgery  of  writ- 
ing to  men  of  action.  But  it  is  apparent 
to  me  that  the  true  essayist  is  a  man  troubled 
with  a  great  loneliness.  He  finds,  doubtless, 
being  a  generous  lover  of  his  fellows,  a 
number  of  acquaintances  who  share  and  even 
surpass  his  own  special  virtues  ;  but  he  can- 
not discover  in  his  personal  environment 
those  rarer  beings  who  should  also  disclose 
his  own  delicate  vices  ;  and  these  are  the 
men  above  ail  others  with  whom  he  wishes 
to  come  in  contact.  So  he  takes  pen  and 
paper,  and,  setting  down  his  faults  and  his 
merits  with  a  high  fairness,  stretches,  as  it 
were,  a  pair  of  appealing  hands  to  his  com- 
rades in  the  world.  This  habit  of  analysing 
his  own  weakness  gives  him  an  introspective 
turn  of  mind.  He  is  always  lying  in  wait 
to  catch  himself  tripping  ;  but  he  would  not 
have  you  ignore  the  other  side  of  his  char- 
acter ;  he  wishes  to  be  fair  to  himself  and 
honourable  to  you.  He  prepares  a  kind  of 


THE   DECAY   OF  THE   ESSAY          13 

balance-sheet  for  Judgment  Day,  and  he  is 
above  all  things  anxious  that  it  should  be 
correct.  His  heart,  to  use  a  worthily  hack- 
neyed phrase,  is  in  his  work,  and  he  ap- 
points humanity  his  auditor. 

Essays  are  written  by  leisurely  men  for 
leisurely  readers.  You  cannot  read  Lamb 
as  you  read  a  romance — passionately — tear- 
ing the  pages.  The  words  flow  smoothly 
across  the  printed  pages,  and  you  drift  com- 
fortably with  the  current,  pausing  here  and 
there,  as  doubtless  Lamb  paused  in  the  writ- 
ing, to  dream  in  some  twilit  backwater  of 
thought.  The  nominal  purpose  of  the 
voyage  may  be  trifling  ;  but  its  true  pur- 
pose is  as  splendid  as  all  high  human  en- 
deavour. We  do  not  really  dare  the  great 
adventure  in  order  to  see  Charles  Lamb 
dreaming  over  the  crackling  of  roast  pork, 
or  Mr.  Max  Beerbohm  in  rapt  contemplation 
of  his  hat-box.  Our  autumn  has  its  pork, 
and  we,  too,  have  our  hat-boxes.  We  set 
out,  like  all  great  explorers,  in  search  of 
ourselves,  and  our  common  sense  tells  us 
that  we  are  most  likely  to  get  authentic  news 
of  our  destination  from  the  intellectual 


14  MONOLOGUES 

honesty  of  the  essayists.  Theirs  is  the 
seasoned  wisdom  and  ripe  authority  of  old 
travellers,  and  we  realize  in  reading  their 
log-books  that  our  road  does  not  differ 
greatly  from  theirs.  Perhaps  at  the  end  of 
the  journey  we  shall  know  that  all  roads  are 
one. 

I  suppose  that,  using  the  word  "  essay  "  in 
the  restricted  sense  I  have  suggested,  the 
great  essayists  might  easily  be  numbered  on 
a  baby's  toes,  and,  as  one  of  them  still 
flourishes,  the  decay  that  has  overtaken  this 
form  of  expression  may  not  be  immediately 
obvious.  But  in  the  past  there  has  always 
been  a  host  of  minor  essayists,  writers  who 
might  not  achieve  a  great  partnership 
between  their  hearts  and  their  pens,  but  who 
did  agreeable  work  nevertheless,  and  it  is 
the  absence  of  these  minor  writers  of  essays 
from  the  number  of  our  modern  authors  that 
alarms  me.  It  is  true  that  we  have  our 
Charles  Lamb,  but  I  look  in  vain  for  our 
Leigh  Hunt.  Nor  can  we  let  ourselves  be 
put  off  with  some  of  the  very  able  work 
that  appears  in  periodicals,  and  has  the 
shape  and  length  and  general  outward  ap- 


THE   DECAY   OF   THE   ESSAY          15 

pearance  of  real  essays.  Journalism  is 
growing  more  impersonal,  though  by  no 
means  less  egoistic,  and  you  may  search  the 
writings  even  of  our  individual  journalists, 
such  as  Mr.  Chesterton  and  Mr.  Lucas,  Mr. 
Benson  and  Mr.  Belloc,  in  vain  for  a  decent 
confession  of  personal  weaknesses.  It  is 
true  they  set  down  their  petty  private  vices — 
no  one  who  even  pretends  to  write  essays 
can  help  doing  that — but  they  make  them 
appear  either  humorously  criminal,  or  like 
so  many  virtues  in  disguise,  and  we  have 
seen  that  your  true  essayist  is  neither  a 
sinner  nor  a  saint,  but  just  a  common  man 
like  his  readers.  So  while  we  who  are 
ashamed  of  the  skeletons  in  our  waistcoat- 
pockets  may  read  the  writings  of  these 
gentlemen  for  their  wit  and  cleverness,  we 
will  continue  to  turn  to  Lamb  and  Montaigne 
for  sympathy  and  advice.  They  will  bring 
us  to  the  place  where  dreams  blend  with 
realities,  and  action  puts  on  the  gentle  gown 
of  thought. 

The  fact  is,  that  essays  are  bad  journalism 
in  the  literal  sense  of  that  elastic  word, 
because  they  take  no  count  of  time,  while  it 


16  MONOLOGUES 

is  the  function  of  journalism  to  tear  the 
heart  out  of  to-day.  A  good  essay  should 
start  and  end  in  a  moment  as  long  as 
eternity  ;  it  should  have  the  apparent  aim- 
lessness  of  life,  and,  like  life,  it  should  have 
its  secret  purpose.  Perhaps  the  perfect  essay 
would  take  exactly  a  lifetime  to  write  and 
exactly  a  lifetime  to  comprehend  ;  but,  in 
their  essence,  essays — I  cling  to  my  restricted 
sense  of  the  word — ignore  time  and  even 
negate  it.  They  cannot  be  read  in  railway 
trains  by  travellers  who  intend  to  get  out  at 
a  certain  station,  for  the  mere  thought  of  a 
settled  destination  will  prevent  the  reader 
from  achieving  the  proper  leisurely  frame  of 
mind.  Nor  can  they  be  written  for  a  liveli- 
hood, for  a  man  who  sits  down  to  write  an 
essay  should  be  careless  as  to  whether  his 
task  shall  ever  be  finished  or  not. 

It  may  be  said  confidently  that  few  persons 
write  like  this  to-day  ;  it  may  even  be  ob- 
jected by  sticklers  for  accuracy  in  titles  that 
few  persons  ha  ^  ever  written  like  this,  and 
I  am  willing  to  agree.  But  the  essayist 
whom  I  have  described  is  the  perfect  type — 
that  ideal  which  less  gifted  men  can  only 


THE  DECAY  OF  THE  ESSAY          17 

pursue  to  the  brink  of  their  graves  ;  and 
while  in  some  measure  this  was  always  the 
ideal  of  periodical  writers  in  the  past,  it 
certainly  is  in  no  wise  the  ideal  of  the 
journalists  of  to-day.  They  do  not  wish  to 
write  sympathetically  of  themselves ;  they 
cannot  linger  with  leisurely  trains  of  thought. 
Breathless  assurance,  dogmatic  knowledge, 
and  a  profusion  of  capital  "  we  "  s  help  them 
to  sing  their  realization  of  the  glories  of  to- 
day, their  passionate  belief  in  the  future, 
their  indifferent  contempt  for  the  past. 
These  are,  they  tell  us,  days  of  action,  and 
dreamers  can  have  but  short  shrift  in  a 
common -sense  world.  Probably  this  is  true, 
but  I  notice  that  the  literature  of  action  does 
not  make  its  readers  very  comfortable.  Men 
and  women  are  growing  weary -eyed  these 
days,  and  their  feet  stumble  like  those  of 
tired  runners.  Their  voices  are  growing 
hoarse  from  shouting  energetic  prophecies 
into  the  deaf  ears  of  the  future,  and  their 
hands  are  sore  from  their  unending  task  of 
holding  the  round  earth  in  its  place.  They 
cannot  dream  because  they  will  not  allow 
themselves  to  sleep. 

2 


18  MONOLOGUES 

It  may  be  morbid,  but  I  sometimes  think 
that  I  can  detect  a  note  of  wistfulness  in  the 
eyes  of  my  neighbours  in  life,  when  they 
let  them  stray  from  their  newspapers  to  rest 
for  a  moment  on  the  leaves  of  my  book. 
Once  I  discovered  a  tear  on  the  cheek  of 
a  clerk  in  the  city,  and  I  taxed  him  with  this 
mark  of  treachery  to  the  life  of  action  ;  but 
he  assured  me  that  his  sorrow  was  due  to 
the  low  price  of  Consols.  It  may  have  been  ; 
I  do  not  know.  But  one  of  these  days  our 
journalists  will  have  to  stop  to  take  breath, 
and  in  the  universal  holiday  perhaps  some 
of  their  readers  will  have  time  to  write 
essays. 


II 

THE    TYRANNY    OF    THE     UGLY 

WHEN  a  young  man  first  awakens  to  a  sense 
of  the  beauty  and  value  of  life,  it  is  natural 
that  he  should  be  overwhelmed  by  the  ugli- 
ness of  the  inheritance  that  his  ancestors 
have  forced  upon  him.  He  finds  in  the  civi- 
lization that  he  has  had  no  place  in  devising, 
a  tyranny  against  which  it  appears  almost 
impossible  to  make  any  resistance,  a  dogma 
which  he  is  told  every  one  except  a  young 
fool  must  accept  as  a  truth,  a  law  the  break- 
ing of  which  will  number  him  beyond 
redemption  among  the  criminal  or  the  insane. 
It  may  be  that  in  the  first  joy  of  his  appre- 
ciation of  the  beautiful,  he  will  think  that 
his  life  and  the  life  of  any  man  may  best 
be  passed  in  the  cultivation  of  a  keener  sense 
of  beauty,  that,  to  put  it  in  a  concrete  form, 

19 


20  MONOLOGUES 

it  is  better  to  grow  and  love  roses  in  a 
cottage  garden  than  to  reign  in  an  umbrella 
factory ;  but  this  briefest  of  the  allusions 
of  youth  will  be  shattered  forthwith  by  what 
appears  to  be  the  first  law  of  civilized  life, 
that  a  man  can  only  earn  his  living  by  the 
manufacture  of  ugliness. 

It  is  probable  that  in  his  bitterness  the 
young  man  will  turn  for  comfort  to  those 
latter-day  prophets  and  philosophers  whose 
wisdom  perhaps  may  have  solved  a  problem 
which  seems  to  him  beyond  hope,  but  he  will 
certainly  be  disappointed.  On  the  one  hand 
he  will  find  the  wise  men  of  the  day  devising 
schemes  for  the  proper  management  and 
control  of  umbrella  factories  with  a  view 
to  the  greatest  public  good  ;  on  the  other 
he  will  find  them  sighing  for  the  roses  of 
medievalism,  or  proving  by  ingenious  para- 
dox that  clear  vision  can  find  the  Middle 
Ages  even  now  in  the  lesser  streets  of 
Balham.  For  our  prophets  and  our  philoso- 
phers have  forgotten  that  they  were  ever 
young,  and  with  the  passing  years  their  ideal 
world  has  become  a  sort  of  placid  alms-house, 
free  from  draughts  and  disturbances,  a  place 


THE  TYRANNY  OF  THE  UGLY        21 

where  the  aged  and  infirm  can  sit  at  ease 
and  scheme  little  revolutions  on  a  sound 
conservative  basis,  without  any  jarring  note 
of  laughter  or  discord  of  the  hot  blood  of 
the  young.  And  so  the  young  man  must 
turn  to  the  poets,  and  find  what  comfort 
he  may  in  the  knowledge  that  there  are 
others  who  have  felt  and  feel  even  as  he, 
that  there  are  others  who  have  wondered 
whether  the  best  of  a  man's  life  should  be 
spent  in  paying  for  the  blotting  out  of  nature 
with  unsightly  lumps  of  brick  and  steel,  in 
aiding  in  the  manufacture  of  necessaries  that 
are  not  necessary,  in  repeating  stupidly  the 
ugly  crimes  of  yesterday  in  order  to  crush 
the  spirit  of  his  children  and  his  children's 
children. 

Of  course  it  may  be  said  that  this  love 
of  beauty  on  the  part  of  a  young  man  is 
morbid  and  unnatural,  and  the  just  conse- 
quence of  an  unwise  or  defiant  education, 
for  civilization,  with  a  somewhat  ignoble 
cunning,  has  guarded  against  possible 
treachery  on  the  part  of  her  children,  by 
causing  them  to  be  taught  only  such  things 
as  may  lead  them  to  her  willing  service. 


22  MONOLOGUES 

It  is  unnecessary  to  point  out  that  the 
dangerous  revolutionary  spirit  which  wor- 
ships lovely  things  is  not  encouraged  in  our 
national  schools.  The  children  of  the  State 
are  taught  to  cut  up  flowers  and  to  call  the 
fragments  by  cunning  names,  but  they  are 
not  invited  to  love  them  for  their  beauty,. 
They  can  draw  you  a  map  of  the  railway 
line  from  Fishguard  to  London,  and  prattle 
glibly  of  imports  and  exports,  and  the  popu- 
lations of  distant  countries,  but  they  know 
nothing  of  the  natural  beauties  of  the  places 
they  name,  nor  even  of  such  claims  as  there 
are  in  the  city  in  which  they  live.  Their 
lips  lisp  dates  and  the  dry  husks  of  history, 
but  they  have  no  knowledge  of  the  splendid 
pageant  of  bygone  kingdoms  and  dead  races. 
Nor  in  our  public  life,  which  might  better 
be  named  our  public  death,  is  there  shown 
any  greater  regard  for  the  spiritual  side  of 
the  parents  than  there  is  for  that  of  the 
children.  Heedless  of  the  advice  of  artists, 
the  ignorant  and  uncultured  men  whom  am- 
bition alone  has  placed  in  a  responsible 
position,  will  ruin  the  design  of  a  street  for 
the  sake  of  a  few  pieces  of  silver,  and  for 


THE  TYRANNY  OF  THE  UGLY        23 

the  fear  that  the  spending  of  public  money 
on  making  London  beautiful  may  endanger 
their  seats  at  the  next  election  with  honest 
electors  who  have  learnt  their  lesson  of  ugli- 
ness only  too  well.  The  cheaper  newspapers, 
which  alone  are  read  by  the  people  as  a 
whole,  seek  out  and  dilate  on  ugliness  with 
passionate  ingenuity,  and  even  those  papers 
which  appear  to  be  read  by  the  more 
leisured  classes,  find  no  disgrace  in  filling 
five  columns  with  the  account  o'f  a  bestial 
murder,  and  in  compressing  the  speech 
of  a  great  man  of  letters  into  a  meagre 
five  lines. 

Where,  then,  can  a  young  man  seek  for 
beauty  in  the  life  of  to-day?  Only,  as  I 
have  said  above,  in  literature,  and  only  there 
because  the  mere  writing  of  a  book  is  not 
sufficient  to  make  it  a  contribution  to  litera- 
ture if  it  be  not  at  the  same  time  an  expres- 
sion of  that  beauty  of  life  which  is,  in  spite 
of  our  rulers,  eternal.  For  there  are  ugly 
books  enough,  and  there  are  a  multitude  of 
ugly  writers  to  swell  their  numbers,  but  our 
critics,  when  they  are  honest,  can  render 
their  labours  vain  ;  and  though  there  is  an 


24  MONOLOGUES 

outcry  in  the  camps  of  the  ugly  when  such  a 
critic  has  spoken  his  daring  word,  the  word 
has  been  spoken,  and  the  book  is  dismissed 
to  the  shelves  of  the  folk  who  care  for  such 
trash.  But  our  critics  must  be  honest. 


Ill 

THE   TRUE    BOHEMIA 

IT  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  in  the  view 
of  ordinary  persons  Bohemianism  is  a  pose, 
and,  moreover,  a  very  troublesome  pose. 
They  see  that  as  a  class  Bohemians  are  care- 
less in  their  dress,  eccentric  in  their  morals, 
and  fonder  of  literature  than  seems  proper 
to  reasonable  folk ;  and,  not  content  with 
being  annoyed,  they  conclude  with  a  natural 
but  hardly  intelligent  egoism  that  this  neglect 
of  the  conventions  on  the  part  of  the  natives 
of  Bohemia  is  adopted  solely  for  the  purpose 
of  annoying  aliens.  This  error,  which  does 
not  prevail  among  unintellectual  people 
alone,  were  pardonable  if  the  sedate  did  not 
immediately  conclude  that  this  "  pose  "  is  it- 
self Bohemianism,  and  that  therefore  if  you 
could  make  a  Bohemian  put  on  a  clean  collar, 
discard  his  library  of  poets,  and  attend  a 

25 


26  MONOLOGUES 

series  of  Salvationist  meetings,  you  would  at 
once  change  him  to  a  respectable  ratepayer 
with  a  sitting  in  a  chapel  and  a  decent  villa 
in  a  decent  back-street  of  Philistia.  In  a 
word,  they  confuse  the  external  manifesta- 
tions of  the  Bohemian  spirit  with  that  spirit 
itself. 

It  must  be  a  matter  of  regret  to  every 
one  who  has  the  Bohemian  interests  at  heart 
that  Stevenson  never  wrote  an  essay  on  the 
subject.  His  sympathy  and  admiration  for 
youth  exactly  qualified  him  for  the  task,  and 
as  it  is  I  believe  it  to  be  possible  to  state 
the  Bohemian  position  very  well  by  quoting 
from  his  books.  Always  self-conscious,  he 
never  wrote  about  youth  without  casting  a 
forgiving  eye  on  his  own,  which  was,  in  spite 
of  his  weak  health  and  the  Shorter  Cate- 
chism, essentially  that  of  a  Bohemian.  And 
it  was,  therefore,  to  his  writings  that  I  turned 
in  my  search  for  a  definition. 

"  Youth,"  he  writes  somewhere,  "  taking 
fortune  by  the  beard,  demands  joy  like  a 
right "  ;  and  the  essay  entitled  "  Crabbed 
Age  and  Youth,"  in  "  Virginibus  Puerisque," 
is  a  spirited  defence  of  those  illogical  enthu- 


THE   TRUE   BOHEMIA  27 

siasms  that  are  so  dear  to  Bohemians,  and 
so  much  condemned  in  any  man  : 

"  Youth  is  the  time  to  go  flashing  from 
one  end  of  the  world  to  the  other  both  in 
mind  and  body  ;  to  try  the  manners  of  dif- 
ferent nations  ;  to  hear  the  chimes  at  mid- 
night ;  to  see  sunrise  in  town  and  country  ; 
to  be  converted  at  a  revival  ;  to  circum- 
navigate the  metaphysics,  write  halting 
verses,  run  a  mile  to  see  a  girl,  and  wait 
all  day  long  at  the  theatre  to  see  Hernani." 

I  feel  that  these  two  quotations  contain 
the  root  of  the  matter,  and  I  would  venture 
to  suggest  that  the  Bohemian  is  the  man  who 
demands  joy  most  passionately,  whose  en- 
thusiasms are  least  logical,  in  fact  that  the 
Bohemian  spirit  is  the  quintessence  of  youth- 
fulness.  Thence  follows  as  a  matter  of 
course  the  acceptance  of  the  motto  "  Life  for 
Life's  sake,"  that  effort  to  obtain  from  every 
moment  of  existence  a  perfect  expression  of 
life,  which  stirs  the  Bohemian  to  a  constant 
sense  of  his  own  vitality,  and  lends  to  his 
most  trivial  actions  an  air  of  consciousness 
so  manifest  that  they  must  needs  be  inter- 
preted by  the  sleepers  and  the  half-dead  as 


28  MONOLOGUES 

fragments  of  an  indecently  scornful  pose. 
Full  of  a  sense  that  he  is  making  history 
for  his  old  age,  he  tastes  life  as  a  man  tastes 
wine,  and  he  mixes  his  drinks  ;  so  that  if 
you  see  him  roystering  in  a  tavern  to-day 
you  may  depend  upon  it  he  will  be  reading 
fairy -stories  to  a  nursery  ful  of  babies  to- 
morrow. 

Of  course,  the  charge  of  selfishness  may 
be  brought  against  this  ideal  of  Bohemia, 
just  as  it  has  been  brought  against  every 
ideal  that  man's  heart  has  ever  coveted.  But 
it  must  be  allowed  that  the  Bohemian  has 
certain  very  definite  and  admirable  human 
qualities  in  a  marked  degree.  He  loves  to 
make  sacrifices,  though,  as  may  be  said  of 
others  besides  Bohemians,  he  had,  perhaps, 
rather  do  good  to  his  neighbour  than  that 
his  neighbour  should  be  done  good  to.  He 
has  a  passionate  fondness  for  beauty,  and 
an  aptitude  for  discovering  it  in  unlikely 
places.  Finding  how  often  the  things  he 
likes  himself  are  condemned,  he  achieves  a 
youthful  tolerance  only  lacking  in  discrimi- 
nation. And,  having  regard  to  this  toler- 
ance, every  honest  intelligent  young  man 


THE  TRUE   BOHEMIA  29 

ought  to  be  thus  far  a  Bohemian,  for  he  can 
condemn  nothing  of  knowledge  but  only  of 
impulse,  and  of  all  things  he  should  hate 
intellectual  priggishness  most.  The  experi- 
ence will  come  and  he  must  drop  out  of  the 
number  of  the  elect,  but  he  has  won  his 
spurs,  and  the  glamour  of  his  genial  knight- 
hood will  be  with  him  for  ever. 

And,  indeed,  it  were  wise  if,  as  our  promis- 
ing youths  were  once  wont  to  make  the 
Grand  Tour  before  settling  down  to  the  busi- 
ness of  life,  they  were  now,  one  and  all, 
to  visit  this  bitter-sweet  country  of  Bohe- 
mia—sweet because  it  is  the  ultimate  expres- 
sion of  youth,  bitter  because,  like  youth  it- 
self, it  is  evanescent.  For,  as  a  reformed 
spendthrift  makes  the  best  of  misers,  so  a 
man  who  once  upon  a  time  has  lived  ten 
years  of  his  life  in  one  eager  year  may  be 
trusted  to  exercise  a  just  discretion  in  the 
difficult  matter  of  living  ever  after.  And 
further,  Bohemia  is  a  school  in  which  a 
man  can  supply  those  parts  of  learning 
which  his  more  formal  education  will  not 
have  touched.  He  may  learn  here  the  merits 
and  defects  of  excess,  the  critical  value  of 


30  MONOLOGUES 

laughter,  the  breadth  and  glory  of  the 
country  we  call  life,  the  cheerful  habit  of 
open  speech,  the  joys  of  comradeship  and 
the  necessity  of  examining  a  convention 
before  accepting  it,  even  if  his  great-grand- 
father has  tried  it  and  found  it  good  before 
him.  He  will  become  wise  in  drink,  care- 
less in  tobacco,  and  tolerant  of  bad  food  if 
only  it  be  cheap.  From  hearing  unknown 
poets  recite  their  own  verses  he  will  learn 
that  there  is  a  wealth  of  unpublished  poetry 
in  the  land,  that  there  are  other  men  besides 
himself  and  the  handful  of  poets  in  "  Who's 
Who,"  for  whom  life  is  a  beautiful  story 
even  if  it  have  no  moral.  And  perhaps, 
most  necessary  of  all,  he  will  come  to  believe 
that  knowledge  itself  is  of  small  account,  but 
that  in  the  power  to  learn  lies  the  strength 
of  a  man's  mind. 

Perhaps  not  all  the  Bohemians  with  whom 
he  may  come  in  contact  will  be  to  his  liking. 
For  here,  as  elsewhere,  you  will  find  char- 
latans, since  the  one  vice  undreamed  of  in 
Bohemia  is  shrewdness,  and  the  inhabitants 
fall  an  easy  prey  for  a  time.  But  a  State 
which  demands  constant  sacrifices  of  its 


THE  TRUE  BOHEMIA  31 

children  cannot  content  knaves  long,  and  they 
soon  scuttle  back  to  their  kin  with  pocket- 
books  stuffed  with  lies  and  an  air  of  happy 
escape.  Then,  too,  the  saddest  thing  in  all 
Bohemia,  the  old  Bohemians,  the  Peter  Pans 
who  will  not  grow  up,  may  disturb  his  peace 
of  mind  for  a  while  with  their  reckless 
jollity  and  their  air  of  great  opportunities 
wantonly  missed.  But  so  benign  a  spirit 
does  Bohemia  inspire  in  its  patriots  that  it 
is  quite  probable  that  they  will  lead  him 
aside  and  warn  him  against  permitting  his 
adventures  to  become  habits,  with  pointed 
references  to  their  own  lives.  And  on  the 
whole  he  will  spend  the  happiest  time  in 
his  life.  He  may  be  in  London,  or  Paris, 
or  Belfast — it  does  not  matter  where,  for 
Bohemia  exists  where  Bohemians  are,  and 
cafes  or  suburbs  have  as  little  to  do  with 
the  true  Bohemian  spirit  as  untidy  clothes 
and  neglected  barbers.  Of  course,  unless  he 
is  one  man  out  of  a  hundred,  the  splendid 
vision  will  pass  and  he  will  find  himself 
facing  civilization  itself  in  the  end.  But  by 
then  he  will  be  equipped  with  all  those 
weapons  of  wisdom  and  tolerance  that  Bohe- 


32  MONOLOGUES 

mia  provides  for  its  knights,  nor  shall  he 
lose  the  old  faith  and  the  old  wonder,  though 
time  has  proved  that  the  life  he  sought  so 
eagerly  was  itself  a  dream. 

Yes,  for  all  save  the  unfortunate  it  must 
pass ;  and  yet  as  I  sit  in  my  castle  in 
Bohemia  and  write  these  lines  I  hear  the 
songs  of  the  citizens  rising  from  the  street 
and  their  laughter  echoing  among  the  house- 
tops, and  I  dread  the  day  when  my  palaces 
shall  change  to  factories  and  my  domes  to 
chimneys  and  I  shall  be  able  to  see  the 
truth  no  more. 


IV 

DREAMING    AS    AN    ART 

IT  is  sometimes  pleasant,  when  the  facts  of 
life  begin  to  annoy  us,  to  remember  that 
we  are  only  dreamers  in  a  world  of  dreams. 
Our  dreams  are  no  less  real  to  our  minds 
than  our  waking  adventures,  and  it  is  only 
chance  that  has  led  us  to  exaggerate  the  im- 
portance of  the  one  at  the  expense  of  the 
other.  If  poets  had  been  of  any  importance 
in  the  earlier  days  of  the  world,  we  might 
easily  have  come  to  consider  our  waking  life 
as  a  pleasant  period  of  rest  for  the  emotions, 
while  cultivating  our  dream  pastures,  till 
their  roses  became  like  crimson  domes  and 
their  lilies  like  silver  towers  under  the  stars. 
But  the  hard-headed  men  who  could  throw 
brick-bats  farther  than  their  neighbours  had, 
I  presume,  the  ordering  of  events  in  those 
far  dim  days,  and  therefore  to-day  we  all 

3  33 


34  MONOLOGUES 

believe  in  tables  and  scoff  at  ghosts  ;  we 
enjoy  smoking-room  stories  and  yawn  at 
dreams.  I  might  almost  have  added  that  we 
knight  the  throwers  of  brick-bats  and  starve 
the  majority  of  the  poets,  but  I  would  be  the 
last  to  deny  the  justice  of  this  arrangement, 
for  if  the  former  class  has  taken  the  day- 
light earth  to  itself,  the  poets  hold  in 
their  treasuries  the  title  deeds  of  the  fertile 
pastures  and  purple  mountains  of  sleep.  I 
know  who  is  the  richer. 

And  if  our  dreams  pass  with  the  morning, 
it  is  no  less  true  that  our  realities  pass  with 
the  coming  of  sleep.  We  see  a  man  fall 
asleep  in  a  railway  carriage,  and  our  illusory 
faculties  tell  us  that  he  is  still  there,  while 
he  himself,  who  should  surely  know,  is  only 
too  well  aware  that  he  is  being  chased  by 
a  mad,  white  bull  across  the  Bay  of  Biscay. 
Probably  he  will  return  to  the  railway 
carriage  presently,  but  meanwhile  the  bull 
and  the  blue  waters  are  as  true  for  him  as 
his  stertorous  body  is  for  us  who  lament 
his  snoring.  And  why  should  we  prefer  our 
impressions  to  his? 

The  point  is  important,  because  in   sup- 


DREAMING  AS  AN  ART  35 

porting  the  claims  of  the  dream  world 
against  those  of  our  waking  life  it  is  neces- 
sary to  meet  the  case  of  the  man  who  says  : 
"  I  should  soon  come  to  grief  if  I  took  to 
dreaming."  As  a  matter  of  fact  (and  this 
throws  some  light  on  the  life  histories  of 
our  poets)  it  seems  impossible  to  be  suc- 
cessful in  both  worlds.  We  all  know  the 
earthly  troubles  that  overtake  dreamers,  and 
I  am  willing  to  wager  that  your  Jew  million- 
aire goes  bankrupt  half  a  dozen  times  a  night 
in  his  sleep,  where  all  his  yellow  money 
cannot  save  him.  Probably,  if  you  cultivate 
the  art  of  dreaming,  you  will  pay  for  it 
under  the  sun,  but  whereas  our  chances  on 
the  earth  are  limited  by  our  opportunities, 
the  lands  of  sleep  are  boundless  and  our 
holding  is  only  limited  by  our  capacity  for 
dreaming.  There  are  no  trusts  in  dreams. 

Next  it  is  necessary  to  consider  how  far 
it  is  possible  to  command  our  dreams  at 
will,  and  this,  I  think,  is  very  largely  a 
matter  of  practice.  At  first  hearing,  most 
people  would  think  a  man  who  said  that 
he  could  dream  when  and,  to  a  certain 
degree,  whatever  he  wanted,  untruthful.  But 


36  MONOLOGUES 

the  effects  of  opium  on  the  practised  eater 
are  known  to  every  one,  and  cucumber  and 
lobster  salads  have  been  calculated  in  terms 
of  nightmares  to  a  nicety,  and  while  depre- 
cating these  more  violent  stimulants,  I  am 
sure  that  by  choosing  a  judicious  daylight 
environment,  the  will  can  be  brought  to  bear 
almost  directly  on  our  midnight  adventures. 
I  may  refer,  in  support  of  this,  to  the 
number  of  instances  quoted  in  Mr.  Lang's 
"  Book  of  Dreams  and  Ghosts,"  of  persons 
solving  problems  in  their  sleep  which  had 
baffled  them  when  they  were  awake. 

To  any  one  who  wishes  to  dream  pleasant, 
if  unoriginal,  dreams,  I  should  recommend 
a  life  of  intellectual  rather  than  emotional 
idleness.  The  theatre,  music,  flowers  and 
novels  of  a  badly-written,  exciting  character 
are  all  serviceable  for  this  kind  of  dreamer, 
and  he  or  she  should  cultivate  a  habit  of 
wandering  and  incoherent  thought.  The  rest, 
as  I  have  suggested,  is  a  matter  of  will,  but 
I  warn  the  unwary  that  the  results  are  apt 
to  be  surprising. 

For,  after  all,  except  possibly  in  certain 
cases  of  insanity,  the  two  worlds  overlap  but 


DREAMING  AS  AN  ART  37 

slightly.  Usually  we  can  recall  a  small 
chapter  of  the  dream  we  have  dreamed,  and 
in  our  sleep  we  retain  a  little  of  our  waking 
wisdom,  and  that  is  all.  From  the  splendid 
garden  in  which  you  wandered  last  night 
you  brought  away  nothing  perhaps  but  a 
flower  or  two,  broken  in  waking.  To-night 
you  may  be  flying  about  the  house-tops  as 
if  you  had  never  accepted  the  law  of  gravity 
as  a  fact.  And  as  you  may  not  now  recall 
the  laws  which  govern  your  kingdom  of 
sleep,  you  can  only  suggest  a  course  for  your 
movements  therein,  at  the  risk  of  finding 
yourself  engaged  in  a  series  of  very  uncom- 
fortable adventures.  Owing  to  an  effort  to 
dream  short  stories  after  the  manner  of 
Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  I  was  compelled  to 
commit  two  singularly  brutal  murders, 
touched  with  a  number  of  lifelike  but  repel- 
lent details.  I  know  better  now,  for  I  have 
learnt  that  for  me  it  is  a  rule  of  sleep  that 
I  should  take  the  leading  part  myself,  even 
though,  oddly  enough,  the  dream  is  still  a 
work  of  art  so  far  as  to  allow  me  to  go 
back  and  alter  incidents  which  do  not  fit  in 
with  the  latter  part  of  the  story.  I  may 


38  MONOLOGUES 

add  that,  owing  to  the  extraordinary  logic 
which  binds  my  movements  when  asleep,  the 
stories  are  hardly  ever  any  good  from  a 
waking  point  of  view,  but  the  dreams  are 
agreeable  because  I  have  a  subconscious  glow 
of  self-congratulation  on  the  vast  quantity 
of  work  that  I  am  doing.  I  think  it  possible 
that  all  very  lazy  people  have  this  glow  in 
their  dreams,  for  this  would  account  for  the 
quite  immoral  happiness  of  the  habitually 
idle.  Moreover,  it  constitutes  a  quite  reason- 
able defence  for  laziness,  for  no  one  can 
be  expected  to  work  all  round  the  clock,  and 
if  a  prince  has  been  opening  imaginary 
bazaars  all  night,  you  cannot  ask  him  to 
lay  real  foundation-stones  all  day.  We  can, 
and  do,  punish  men  for  preferring  their 
labours  in  the  other  world  to  their  labours 
in  this  ;  but  we  have  no  right  to  call  them 
foolish  as  well  as  criminal.  Rebels  against 
the  conventional  must  be  corrected  to  satisfy 
the  majority  that  it  is  right ;  but  it  is 
narrow-minded  to  despise  them.  They  may 
be  tyrants  in  the  dim  places  where  dreams 
are  born. 

And   this   brings   me   to   the  whole   moral 


DREAMING  AS  AN  ART  39 

aspect  of  dreams  and  dreaming,  a  point  on 
which  I  would  gladly  write  a  complete 
article.  It  has  often  been  noticed  that  in 
dreams  we  have  no  sense  of  right  or  wrong  ; 
but  as  we  have  also  no  control  over  our 
actions,  it  would  seem  that  it  would  not 
make  much  difference  if  we  had  that  sense. 
Our  movements  appear  to  be  guided  by  a 
will  outside  our  own  bodies,  and  to  a  certain 
extent,  at  all  events,  this  will  is  the  will  of 
the  normal  daylight  man.  It  is  quite  possible 
to  regard  our  dreams  as  a  kind  of  dramatic 
commentary  on  our  waking  life,  or  as  an 
expression  of  the  emotions  which  the  intel- 
lect has  forced  us  to  suppress  in  that  life. 
If  this  be  so,  we  ourselves  are  more  real  in 
dreams  than  we  are  when  awake,  however 
fantastic  or  ridiculous  those  dreams  may 
appear  to  our  conventional  minds.  And  if  the 
last  art  of  living  is  to  express  ourselves  as  we 
are,  it  would  seem  that  the  whole  duty  of 
man  is  to  dream.  Perhaps  when  we  have 
at  last  come  to  understand  ourselves  well 
enough  to  complete  a  Utopia,  our  uncon- 
ventional lives  will  be  devoted  to  a  number 
of  simple  daily  preparations  for  the  full  en- 


40  MONOLOGUES 

joyment  of  the  dim  world  which  I  believe 
we  can  make  as  we  will,  and  perhaps  our 
true  reward  for  the  pains  and  uncertainties 
of  our  little  lives  is  the  place  where  beauty 
and  joy  follow  desire  as  the  night  follows 
the  day. 


V 
ON    FACTS 

ONCE  upon  a  time  a  small  boy  was  appointed 
to  the  honourable  position  of  lift-boy  in  one 
of  those  amazing  blocks  of  flats  which  insult 
the  blue  sky  from  the  northern  heights  of 
London.  One  of  his  duties  was  the  calling 
of  cabs,  and  he  was  entrusted  with  a  whistle 
for  that  purpose.  "  You  blow  once  for  a 
four-wheeler,  twice  for  a  hansom,  and  three 
times  for  a  taxi,"  said  his  instructor.  "  And 
if  I  blow  four  times?  "  queried  the  boy,  who 
was  of  an  adventurous  turn.  "Ah  !  "  replied 
the  man,  "  you  blow  four  times  for  a 
hearse  !  "  Time  passed,  and,  while  it  often 
fell  to  the  boy's  lot  to  fill  the  street  with 
yearning  appeals  for  cabs,  Death  must  have 
spared  the  mansions,  for  the  boy  was  never 
asked  to  call  a  hearse.  Sometimes,  in  fun, 
he  would  place  his  whistle  to  his  lips  and 

41 


42  MONOLOGUES 

endeavour  to  sound  four  blasts,  but  his 
courage  always  failed  him  after  the  third, 
and  these  adventures  would  end  merely  in 
war-like  dialogues  with  jobbing  chauffeurs. 
At  length,  as  the  boy  stood  in  the  street  one 
night  whistling  vainly  for  a  taxi-cab,  a 
motor-car  struck  him  from  behind,  and  as 
he  fell  the  fatal  fourth  blast  startled  the 
street  with  its  pain.  And  later  there  came 
a  hearse. 

In  the  crinoline  days,  this  story,  with  a 
little  judicious  amendment,  would  have 
become  a  truculent  tract  on  the  perils  that 
await  the  disobedient ;  now,  when  we  have 
so  much  sense,  it  only  suggests  that  if 
motorists  do  not  sound  their  horns,  they  run 
over  adventurous  little  lift-boys. 

But  perhaps  I  may  be  forgiven  if  I  derive 
from  it  the  moral  that  the  danger  of  being 
dogmatic  lies  in  the  fact  that  other  people 
will  probably  attach  much  more  importance 
to  our  dogmatisms  than  we  do  ourselves. 
A  man  with  a  fondness  for  alliteration  may 
pause  in  a  nursery  to  remark  that  the  fairies 
of  the  future  will  be  very  fat,  and  then  forget 
all  about  it.  But  it  is  quite  likely  that  he 


ON  FACTS  43 

has  left  a  nightmare  of  supernatural  fat  in 
the  minds  of  the  children,  and  that  their 
dreams  will  be  disturbed  with  visions  of 
loathsome  fairies  with  pantomime  paunches 
and  financial  chins.  So  various  abhorrent 
bogles  used  to  make  the  darkness  hideous 
in  our  knickerbocker  days,  while  the  inge- 
nious Olympians  who  had  invented  them 
went  blithely  about  their  pleasures.  It  is 
true  that  as  we  grow  up  we  cease  to  accept 
these  purely  aesthetic  torments  ;  but  science 
is  ready  with  very  efficient  substitutes.  Many 
unhappy  people  drag  out  their  wretched  lives 
on  wholemeal  bread  and  sterilized  milk, 
breathing  but  little  for  fear  of  microbes,  and 
wearing  garments  of  loathsome  texture  and 
appearance,  while  their  doctors  carouse  on 
lobsters  and  radishes  in  dressing-gowns  of 
amber  silk.  A  philosopher  may  be  a  hum- 
bug, and  even  a  Justice  of  the  Peace  may 
be  immoral ;  but  their  oratorical  wisdom  will 
pass  for  truth  with  many,  and  our  publicists 
can  pay  for  their  private  vices  by  condemning 
society  for  its  sins. 

Of  course,   men   and  women   accept  rules 
because  they  appear  to  make  life  easier.   The 


44  MONOLOGUES 

doctors  tell  us  that  if  we  get  our  feet  wet 
we  catch  a  cold,  and  we  believe  them,  because 
we  hope  that  by  keeping  our  feet  dry  we 
may  be  spared  this  calamity.  But,  in  the 
interests  of  their  profession,  the  medical  men 
have  chosen  a  cause  which  no  ingenuity  can 
render  uncommon.  The  really  wise  man, 
therefore,  would  dishonour  this  rule,  and 
believe  that  he  only  caught  colds  when  there 
was  a  total  eclipse  of  the  sun  visible  at 
Greenwich.  I  am  prepared  to  listen  patiently 
to  the  learned  arguments  of  my  family  phy- 
sician, but  in  my  heart  I  know  that  the 
doctors  discover  the  cure  first,  and  that  it 
is  only  after  that  fortunate  event  that  Nature 
moves  herself  to  invent  the  disease.  And, 
if  the  doctors  have  afflicted  me  with  neuralgia 
and  hereditary  gout,  I  am  well  aware  that 
Samuel  Smiles  has  made  me  lazy,  and  that 
certain  dim  moralists  have  made  me  vicious. 
I  bear  these  worthies  no  grudge  for  assail- 
ing my  mind  in  its  experienced  days,  and 
slaying  the  bold,  bad  rebel  before  he  could 
stretch  his  wings.  To-day  I  wear  clothes 
and  eat  bacon  and  eggs  for  my  breakfast, 
and  perhaps  one  day  I  shall  have  a  villa 


ON  FACTS  45 

all  of  my  own  on  the  sunny  side  of  the 
Brixton  Road.  If  they  had  not  told  me  so 
many  comfortable  things,  I  might — who 
knows? — have  eaten  honeycomb  on  the 
lower  slopes  of  Parnassus.  Yet  I  say  that  I 
bear  my  kindly  instructors  no  grudge.  There 
is  a  policeman  in  uniform  before  my  door, 
and  no  man  may  smite  me  with  death  before 
that  grim  figure  and  escape  punishment. 
And  therefore  I  know  that  I  must  not  kill 
those  whose  politics  differ  from  mine  ;  and 
it  is  always  a  comfort  in  these  complex  days 
to  know  exactly  what  we  may  not  do. 

I  have  in  my  mind  the  picture  of  a  poor, 
law-abiding  fellow  who  dropped  dead  in 
Regent's  Park  because  he  found  that  he  had 
innocently  disobeyed  a  notice  which  forbade 
him  to  walk  on  the  newly-sown  grass.  For 
years  and  years,  I  suppose,  he  had  seen  those 
curt  prohibitions,  and  never  dreamed  of 
questioning  their  authority.  I  like  to  think 
that  his  last  breath  was  sweetened  with  the 
wild,  sweet  wine  which  tints  the  lips  of 
rebels.  And  perhaps  there  is  a  little  envy 
in  the  thought,  for  I  own  that  I  dare  not 
walk  on  the  grass,  even  by  accident.  In 


46  MONOLOGUES 

truth,  this  is  no  paradox,  for  my  flesh  is  so 
overwhelmed  by  the  value  of  authority,  that, 
even  though  my  brain  wandered  in  moonlit 
gardens,  my  legs  would  not  disobey  the 
London  County  Council.  It  is  so  easy  to 
do  what  we  are  told,  so  hard  to  forget  and 
begin  the  business  afresh.  And,  to  make  the 
matter  complex,  there  is  generally  some 
measure  of  reason  in  these  artificial  limita- 
tions. Once  on  a  wall  at  Hampstead  I  saw 
written  the  loveless  truth,  "  Alcohol  limits 
the  productive  powers  of  the  worker."  It 
was,  I  think,  a  fair  summer  day,  but  my 
spirit  sank  at  once  in  a  mood  of  November 
greyness,  and  Omar  himself  could  not  stay 
my  sorrow  that  all  our  merry  nights  of  wine 
should  end  in  this.  The  soul  of  the  man  who 
first  indited  that  bitter  truth  might  rise  no 
more  from  the  dregs,  and  even  we  who  came 
after  were  influenced  by  his  penitent  mor- 
bidity. Yet,  on  examination,  the  thing  proves 
to  be  but  half  true.  Alcohol  is  but  one  of 
the  thousand  emotional  stimulants  that  inter- 
fere with  our  work.  Love,  flowers,  the 
spring  winds — everything  that  glows  under 
the  skies — is  in  the  conspiracy  against  our 


ON  FACTS  47 

absurd  labours  ;  but  the  fool,  I  suppose, 
could  see  nothing  but  the  alcohol  in  the 
avoiding  of  which  lay  his  poor  hope  of  sal- 
vation. Yet  he  was  as  reasonable  as  most 
dealers  in  dogma,  and  I  see  his  words  in 
every  joyous  bottle. 

Facts  are  rules  to  which  the  great  common 
sense  of  the  majority  will  allow  no  excep- 
tions, and  the  chief  end  of  man  would  appear 
to  be  to  impart  facts  to  his  neighbour.  We 
are  even  asked  to  believe  that  the  accumu- 
lation of  these  tiresome  limitations  is  a  virtue 
and  their  distribution  a  duty,  and  so  there 
are  always  anxious  persons  at  our  elbow  to 
tell  us  things  which  we  do  not  wish  to  know. 
There  is  a  charming  Scotch  ballad,  of  which 
the  first  line  runs,  "  O  waly,  waly  up  the 
bank,"  and  Palgrave  informs  us  gravely  that 
the  root  and  pronunciation  of  the  word  waly 
are  preserved  in  caterwaul  !  Only  less  crimi- 
nally selfish  is  the  man  who  tells  me  the 
way  to  Camden  Town,  and  thus  robs  me  of 
a  walk  through  an  enchanted  city. 

Sometimes,  looking  at  the  sky  on  a  fine 
night,  and  remembering  how  Coleridge  was 
able  to  see  a  star  within  the  horns  of  the 


48  MONOLOGUES 

moon,  a  feat  no  longer  possible  to  well-in- 
formed persons,  I  wonder  whether  the  next 
intellectual  revolution  may  not  be  directed 
against  facts.  Their  influence  on  art  can 
only  be  bad  ;  their  influence  on  man  may 
easily  be  measured  in  terms  of  fear.  I  want 
to  blow  my  whistle  four  times  before  I  am 
choked. 


VI 

ON    KNOWING    LONDON 

THERE  are  a  great  many  ways  of  knowing 
London,  and  there  is  something  to  be  said 
in  favour  of  all  of  them.  There  is  the  way 
of  Walter  Besant,  who  knew  mediaeval 
London  better  than  his  own,  and  found  it 
again  in  Rouen.  There  is  the  way  of  Mr. 
E.  V.  Lucas,  who  knows  all  about  people's 
houses,  little  and  big,  and  that  of  Mr.  F.  M. 
Hueffer,  who  has  threaded  the  thrills  of 
London  on  a  string  like  beads.  Then  there 
is  the  useful  man  who  knows  the  colours 
of  'buses  and  the  characteristic  smells  of 
tubes,  and  the  botanist  who  can  discover 
window-boxes  and  roof-gardens  where  even 
the  birds  may  hardly  suspect  them.  More 
frequent  is  the  man  wise  in  taverns  and  those 
queer  cellars  where  dim  persons  play  domi- 
noes and  drink  coffee.  The  specialized  topo- 

4  49 


50  MONOLOGUES 

graphical  knowledge  of  policemen,  cabmen, 
and  postmen  is  of  a  professional  character, 
and  so  is  that  of  the  flower-girls  and  the 
gentlemen  who  pick  up  the  tips  of  cigars 
and  cigarettes.  I  suppose  the  acrobats  who 
mend  telephone-wires  and  the  man  on  the 
Monument  who  lets  out  telescopes  on  hire, 
know  more  about  the  roof-tops  than  the 
pavements.  Theirs  must  be  a  London  of 
hazardous  precipices  and  little,  still  lakes, 
of  sooty  solitudes  and  noisy  craters. 

But  when  the  learning  of  these  and  a 
hundred  other  classes  of  students  has  been 
examined,  there  remains  the  interesting  prob- 
lem of  the  manner  in  which  the  normal, 
unmethodical  Londoner  is  acquainted  with 
his  city.  He  has  been  often  blamed  because 
he  does  not  rush  round  and  see  the  sights, 
like  the  rapt  American  tourist.  It  has  been 
said,  with  a  great  deal  of  truth,  that  he  does 
not  visit  the  Tower  of  London  or  Westmin- 
ster Abbey  or  the  British  Museum  ;  yet  when 
a  cab -horse  lies  down  in  the  Strand,  a  thing 
that  happens  every  day,  the  police  must  work 
hard  to  prevent  a  crowd  of  eager  spectators 
from  blocking  the  street.  At  first  sight  this 


ON  KNOWING  LONDON  51 

seems  blameworthy,  and  yet  in  truth  a  cab- 
horse  reposing  in  the  Strand  is  more  repre- 
sentative of  modern  London  than  all  her 
public  buildings,  and  possibly  Londoners 
sub -consciously  realize  this.  Strangers  are 
naturally  anxious  to  see  the  things  that  make 
our  city  a  fine  city ;  but  we  who  call  it 
home,  are  hungry  for  the  things  that  make 
our  city  London.  We  have  seen  cathedrals 
and  museums  and  picture-galleries  in  other 
places,  but  our  crowds,  and  our  policemen, 
and  our  cab -horses,  are  ours  alone. 

It  is  this  familiarity  with  what  may  be 
called  the  essential  details  of  London  life 
that  constitutes  the  civic  knowledge  of  nine 
Londoners  out  of  ten,  and  the  guide-book 
wisdom  of  a  foreigner  can  hardly  hope  to 
rival  our  subtleties.  He  may  know  the  mum- 
mies of  the  British  Museum  very  well,  but 
the  pigeons  at  its  gates  are  our  brothers,  and 
not  his.  He  may  speak  learnedly  of  the 
Great  Fire  and  Christopher  Wren,  but  he 
has  not  dropped  orange-pips  from  the  top 
of  the  Monument  as  a  child.  He  may  regard 
the  Embankment  monolith  with  a  mind 
attuned  to  hieroglyphs,  but  he  cannot  know 


52  MONOLOGUES 

that  the  children  of  the  pavement  call  it 
Clara  Patrick's  Needle.  Yet  it  is  these  things, 
or  their  like,  that  we  call  to  mind  when  we 
think  of  London.  Now  and  again,  it  would 
seem,  London  takes  her  infants  by  the  hand, 
and  it  is  in  these  rare  moments  that  we 
arrive  at  our  'finer  knowledge  of  her  ways. 
It  is  something  to  have  seen  the  great  pano- 
rama unroll  itself  from  Hampstead  Hill ;  it 
is  something  to  have  steamed  from  Putney 
to  Southend  on  a  straining  tug ;  but  for 
some  the  lights  of  the  Euston  Road  in  fog, 
for  others  perhaps  the  uneasy  flicker  of 
winter  dawn  on  the  flowers  at  Covent  Garden, 
hold  more  of  London  than  it  all. 

And  so  this  intimate  knowledge  of  their 
city,  common  to  all  true  Londoners,  becomes 
individual  in  its  direct  expression.  I  remem- 
ber a  London  shopkeeper,  miserably  con- 
valescent at  Hastings,  who  showed  me  an  old 
County  Council  tram-car  that  was  used  by 
the  fishermen  for  storing  their  nets  on  the 
beach,  and  there  were  tears  in  his  eyes 
because  it  still  bore  the  soft  names  of  beloved 
southern  suburbs ;  and,  though  my  heart 
was  in  the  north,  with  Euston  and  Hamp- 


ON  KNOWING  LONDON  53 

stead  and  Camden  Town,  I  gave  him  my 
sympathy  freely.  He  told  me  that  he  liked 
the  smell  of  orange-peel,  and  was  sorry  that 
the  custom  of  eating  the  golden  fruit  in  the 
galleries  of  theatres  was  dying  out.  Though 
his  tram-car  had  failed  to  appeal  to  me, 
there  was  something  in  that  to  make  me 
home-sick.  I,  too,  had  loved  the  smell  of 
oranges,  and,  answering  his  recollection,  I 
saw  Farringdon  Market  drift  out  along  the 
beach,  and  the  light  of  the  naphtha  flares 
pass  in  smoke  to  the  sea.  But  why  had  I 
no  school  books? 

It  takes  more  than  oranges  and  tram-cars 
to  give  definition  to  the  picture  we  have 
drawn  on  our  slates.  These  things  might 
conceivably  represent  Manchester  to  an  in- 
habitant of  that  city,  and  we  are  citizens 
of  London.  It  is  rather  from  certain  ecstatic 
moments  that  we  derive  our  impressions  than 
from  any  continuous  emotional  process. 

Thus  I  have  seen  an  escaped  monkey  sit- 
ting on  the  head  of  Robert  Burns  in  the 
Embankment  Gardens  ;  I  have  heard  a  tipsy 
boy  sing  so  sweetly  in  a  large  West  End  cafe 
that  all  the  women  broke  down  and  cried  ; 


54  MONOLOGUES 

I  have  been  roused  from  my  sleep  by  a 
policeman  to  find  that  a  neighbouring  fire 
had  cracked  my  bedroom  windows  ;  I  have 
seen  a  child  blowing  soap-bubbles  in  the 
Strand  and  Olympic  Americans  showing  off 
outside  a  Bloomsbury  hotel ;  I  have  seen 
Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  going  westward  with  his 
beard  of  flax,  and  I  have  heard  Mr.  G.  K. 
Chesterton  laugh  in  a  quiet  street ;  I  have 
seen  the  merchants  of  London  gazing  with 
a  wild  surmise  on  Mr.  Brangwyn's  fresco 
at  the  Royal  Exchange.  From  these  and  a 
thousand  other  similar  moments  I  have  won 
in  some  dim  way  my  knowledge  of  London, 
and  though  I  may  know  her  longer  I  shall 
not  know  her  better.  It  is  not  the  number 
of  such  spiritual  adventures  that  counts,  there 
is  a  small  boy  at  Drury  Lane  Theatre  who 
has  had  twice  as  many  as  I — it  is  rather  the 
extent  to  which  they  affect  us  ;  and  at  an 
early  age  London  ceased  to  astonish  me 
because  I  had  learnt  to  believe  her  capable 
of  anything.  We  who  live  in  London  know 
that  she  is  the  City  of  Infinite  Possibilities. 

Were  a  dragon  to  ramp  at  Westminster, 
we    might    regard    the    Abbey    with    a    new 


ON  KNOWING  LONDON  55 

interest,  but  it  would  not  affect  the  Bank 
rate  ;  and,  knowing  this,  we  go  about  our 
business  with  a  calmness  that  moves  lovers 
of  local  patriotism  to  tears.  Yet  we  are 
patriotic,  when  we  are  not  in  London.  We 
talk  about  her  kindly  on  the  front  at  Brighton 
on  windy  nights,  and  the  man  who  said  that 
the  Niagara  Falls  reminded  him  of  the  fount- 
ains in  Trafalgar  Square  was  not  untypical 
of  her  children. 

To  the  alien,  I  suppose,  London  must  remain 
a  kind  of  scattered  museum,  full  of  interesting 
things,  not  very  well  arranged.  Yet  once, 
at  all  events,  it  seemed  to  me  that,  to  a  man 
newly  fallen  from  Scotland,  there  had  been 
granted  a  glimpse  of  the  only  London  that 
is  really  ours.  I  found  him  startling  the 
echoes  of  the  Adelphi  arches  with  his 
laughter,  and  as  he  was  alone  in  a  place  not 
greatly  mirthful,  I  asked  him  a  reason  for 
his  merriment. 

"  Oh,  I'm  just  laughing  at  Glasgow,"  he 
said. 


VII 
THE  POET  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

A  FEW  weeks  ago  one  of  the  impassioned 
critics  who  tell  posterity  about  books  in  the 
Times  literary  supplement  ventured  to  rebuke 
a  poet  for  remarking  in  his  preface  that  few 
people  take  much  interest  in  modern  verse. 
I  have  lost  the  cutting  which  contained  this 
little  journalistic  jeu  cT  esprit,  and  my  heart 
sinks  at  the  thought  of  searching  for  it  anew 
in  the  files  of  the  Times.  But  I  may  say 
that  I  could  not  help  smiling  at  the  noble 
ardour  of  the  critic,  and  sympathizing  with 
the  dolorous  plaint  of  the  poet.  Hardly  any- 
one does  take  any  interest  in  modern  verse, 
and  this  may  be  proved  not  only  by  look- 
ing at  the  boots  of  poets  and  the  penny - 
boxes  of  secondhand  booksellers,  but  also 
from  the  most  cursory  examination  of  the 
columns  of  the  Times  itself.  Now  and  again 


56 


THE  POET  AND  THE  PEOPLE    57 

it  has  printed  a  political  tract  in  rhyme  from 
the  pen  of  Mr.  Kipling,  and  I  have  some 
dim  recollection  of  other  political  tracts  and 
memorial  couplets  that  have  appeared  in  its 
columns.  But  I  have  never  suspected  it  of 
any  effort  to  print  a  poem  because  it  was 
good. 

And  this  lyrical  reticence,  which  it  shares 
with  all  the  other  morning  papers,  is  suffi- 
ciently suggestive  at  the  present  time,  when 
even  our  most  dignified  periodicals  are  fain 
for  that  popularity  which  has  so  much  weight 
with  advertisers.  If  the  heart  of  the  season- 
ticket  holder  were  capable  of  being  stirred 
by  the  rapt  words  of  poets,  we  should  see 
our  modern  editors  scaling  Parnassus  with 
cheque-books  in  their  hands,  in  search  of 
the  blithe  singers  they  now  successfully 
avoid.  With  smiles  and  courteous  phrases 
on  their  lips  they  would  ply  Pegasus  with 
ingenious  dopes  of  flattery  to  rouse  him  to 
record-breaking  flights.  The  soft  titles  of 
poems  would  contend  on  the  bills  with  the 
names  of  criminals  and  co-respondents.  We 
should  have  the  poet's  criticism  of  the  Cup- 
tie  final  and  the  Boat  Race  and  Tariff 


58  MONOLOGUES 

Reform.  We  should  hear  how  he  wrote  his 
poems  and  what  he  had  for  his  breakfast. 
His  photograph  would  figure  in  the  advertise- 
ment columns,  and  he  would  tell  us  how  he 
cleaned  his  teeth  and  where  he  bought  his 
rouge.  In  brief,  he  would  be  famous. 

But  as  a  matter  of  fact  the  season-ticket 
holder  does  not  care  a  rap  for  poetry,  and 
the  judicious  editor  is  at  pains  to  imitate 
him.  Only,  since  a  newspaper  must  be  cul- 
tured, he  every  now  and  then  allows  one  of 
his  young  men  to  deal  with  a  score  of  little 
volumes  in  a  column  headed  "  Recent  Verse," 
and  it  says  something  for  the  present-day 
journalist  that  frequently  the  column  is  very 
well  written.  With  the  editor,  in  nine  cases 
out  of  ten  a  commercial  man  endeavouring 
more  or  less  successfully  to  interpret  the 
wishes  of  his  customers,  I  shall  have  no 
further  concern,  but  the  case  of  the  average 
Englishman  is  more  interesting.  How  is  it 
that  he,  a  creature  of  flesh  and  blood,  eating 
and  drinking  and  loving  and  breathing  good 
air,  does  not  care  to  see  his  life  expressed 
in  its  highest  emotional  terms? 

I  am  prepared  to  meet  the  objection  that 


THE  POET  AND  THE  PEOPLE    59 

to-day  we  have  no  outstanding  poet  to  win 
the  favour  of  the  majority  of  the  semi- 
cultured.  For  in  the  past  the  middle  classes 
have  been  content  to  elect  their  own  gods. 
They  preferred  Byron  and  Walter  Scott  to 
Keats  and  Shelley,  and  Tennyson  and 
Coventry  Patmore  at  their  worst  to  Brown- 
ing and  Mr.  Swinburne.  I  think  it  may 
be  said  that  we  have  not  discovered  a  Keats 
or  a  Browning  among  our  living  poets,  but 
I  feel  sure  that  only  encouragement  is  needed 
to  produce  a  very  good  substitute  for  the 
Byron  of  "  Childe  Harold  "  or  the  Tennyson 
of  the  "May  Queen."  But  it  is  just  this  en- 
couragement that  is  lacking.  It  is  not  that 
the  general  taste  in  poetry  has  improved  ; 
it  has  rather  died  a  natural  death,  so  that 
a  poet  is  put  to  all  manner  of  shifts  to 
win  a  hearing.  A  friend  of  mine  has  solved 
the  problem  by  visiting  coffee-stalls  in  the 
little  hours  of  the  morning,  and  giving  cake 
and  coffee  to  the  unemployed  on  condition 
that  they  listen  to  his  sonnets.  I  would 
rather  read  a  sonnet  to  a  body  of  loafers 
than  to  the  occupants  of  a  second-class 
carriage  in  a  suburban  morning  train. 


60  MONOLOGUES 

And  in  this  preference  there  lies  the  heart 
of  the  present  problem  ;  it  is  the  middle- 
class  intellectual  who  has  deserted  the  Par- 
nassian colours,  it  is  his  defection  that  has 
made  it  impossible  for  a  poet  to  earn  a  living 
wage,  and  it  is  not  difficult  to  see  why  he 
has  done  so.  When  he  meets  his  neighbour 
in  the  morning,  he  talks  critically  about  the 
weather.  At  mid -day  his  view  of  the  weather 
becomes  introspective,  at  night  prophetic.  He 
is  a  kind  of  inexact  barometer.  If  he  be  a 
pessimist  he  welcomes  the  sunshine  that 
interrupts  the  rain  ;  if  an  optimist  he  de- 
plores the  rain  that  interrupts  the  sunshine. 
But  life  for  him  is  always  a  matter  of 
weather.  Now,  and  it  is  failure  to  realize 
this  that  has  made  poets  what  they  are,  an 
Englishman  talks  about  the  weather  because 
he  is  afraid  to  talk  about  anything  else.  He 
feels  that  in  all  other  topics  there  lurk  vague 
perils.  To  admire  scenery  is  affected, 
sociology  is  coarse,  the  drama  vulgar,  politics 
violent,  religious  discussion  blasphemous, 
and  so  on.  But  to  remark  that  we  really 
do  have  extraordinary  weather  in  England 
is  at  once  good-citizenship  and  sound  im- 


THE  POET  AND  THE  PEOPLE    61 

perialisra.  Therefore  the  poet,  when  he  does 
happen  to  reach  the  ears  of  the  lords  of 
middle-class  homes,  annoys  them  very  much 
by  his  un-English  lack  of  reticence. 

As  every  tradesman  knows,  there  is  a 
fortune  for  any  one  who  can  please  the  great 
middle-classes,  and,  as  in  a  dream,  I  can 
see  a  race  of  poets  springing  up  and  waxing 
fat  by  means  of  their  subtle  power  of  ex- 
pressing the  real  emotions  of  the  backbone 
of  England.  They  will  make  epics  of  wind 
and  rain  and  sudden  hail,  or  in  lighter  mood 
they  will  weave  ballades  of  fog  and  triolets 
of  mud.  Their  works  will  be  largely  quoted 
in  the  suburbs  and  on  the  platforms  of  rail- 
way stations,  and  as  literature  will  form  part 
of  the  curriculum  of  private  schools.  To 
know  them  will  be  a  sign  of  culture,  and 
to  own  the  weather  anthologies  will  stamp 
a  man  as  an  intellectual.  Once  more,  so 
my  dream  runs  ecstatically,  poetry  other  than 
limericks  will  be  good  form,  provided  always 
that  the  poet  observes  his  anti-cyclones  and 
keeps  a  wise  eye  on  his  depressions.  Poets 
will  have  harems  and  motor-cars,  and  nice 
things  to  eat  and  drink,  and  their  poetry  will 


62  MONOLOGUES 

not  suffer,  for  even  now  the  finer  luxuries 
of  the  rich  are  the  mere  necessaries  of  poets. 
The  Poet  Laureate  will  have  a  larger  income 
than  any  of  the  able  office-boys  who  form 
governments.  By  virtue  of  his  rank  he  will 
be  able  to  go  to  pantomimes  and  music-halls 
without  paying  for  his  seat  or  his  pro- 
gramme, and  'bus  conductors  will  know  him 
by  sight.  He  will  form  one  of  the  select 
group  of  great  men  who  answer  the  conun- 
drums of  the  day.  The  Times  will  print 
his  verses. 

Of  course,  this  is  only  a  beautiful  dream, 
a  dream  too  beautiful  to  develop  into  a  con- 
crete fact.  And  it  must  be  recognized  that 
the  responsibility  for  the  present  neglect  of 
poetry  lies  chiefly,  in  an  age  that  loves  the 
word  efficiency,  with  the  poets  themselves. 
Writing  once  before  upon  this  matter,  I 
put  forward  the  perfectly  reasonable  sugges- 
tion that  poets  should  have  their  poems  sold 
in  the  streets  at  a  penny  each.  This  would 
manifestly  be  good  for  the  poets,  and  also 
for  the  happy  English  homes  that  gained 
their  songs.  But  I  only  succeeded  in  draw- 
ing a  correspondent  who  accused  me  of  en- 


THE  POET  AND  THE  PEOPLE    63 

couraging  "  shrieking  versifiers."  I  utterly 
mistrust  the  poet  who  does  not  want  every- 
body to  read  his  poems,  just  as  I  utterly 
mistrust  the  poet  who  prates  about  the 
dignity  of  poverty,  and  does  not  want  lots 
of  money  to  spend.  An  artist  without  vanity 
is  like  a  rocket  without  a  stick,  and  a  poet 
who  does  not  long  for  every  kind  of  emo- 
tional excess  is  a  coward.  To  live  happily 
in  an  attic  nowadays,  when  money  can  buy 
so  many  different  kinds  of  roses,  is  the  sign 
of  a  deficient  imagination.  It  is  true  that 
the  poet's  strength  lies  in  his  dreams,  but 
he  can  always  start  dreaming  where  life 
leaves  off.  If  he  has  a  motor  he  will  desire 
wings  ;  if  he  has  an  airship  he  will  long 
to  sail  through  the  passionless  seas  of  space. 
You  cannot  weary  a  man  of  nectarines  by 
giving  him  apples. 

And  now,  after,  I  fear,  an  excess  of  errant 
flippancy,  I  come  to  my  point.  Poets  must  be 
supported  by  the  State,  and  handsomely  sup- 
ported in  order  that  they  may  cultivate  their 
bitter-sweet  disease  to  advantage.  I  calculate 
that  the  cost  of  one  Dreadnought  would  pro- 
vide an  annual  sum  sufficient  to  keep  twenty 


64  MONOLOGUES 

poets  from  emotional  starvation.  Probably, 
since  England  is  what  it  is,  they  will  have 
to  be  chosen  by  competitive  examination,  but 
once  chosen  they  must  have  complete  liberty 
to  waste  their  lives  as  they  will.  Probably 
three-quarters  of  them  will  thereafter  be 
content  to  lead  pretty  lives  and  write  no 
more ;  possibly  the  others  will  turn  out  a 
few  decent  lyrics.  But  the  moral  effect  of 
State  recognition  of  the  value  of  poetry  will 
be  enormous.  For  the  moment  the  middle- 
classes  discover  that  there  is  money  in 
poetry,  they  will  respect  poets  and  buy  their 
works  and  their  portraits.  Surely  this  desir- 
able end  were  cheaply  attained  at  the  cost  of 
one  battleship  ! 


VIII 
PENSIONS    FOR    POETS 

A  FEW  weeks  ago  I  wrote  an  article,  in  which 
I  suggested  the  wholesale  pensioning  of  Eng- 
lish poets.  I  stated  my  case  flippantly  for 
the  reader's  sake,  but  I  had  quite  a  serious 
purpose  of  my  own.  I  think  poets,  or  for 
that  matter  any  one  who  devotes  his  life 
to  the  unremunerative  production  of  beau- 
tiful things,  should  be  handsomely  supported 
by  the  State.  We  reward  the  persons  who 
make  oil -cloth  and  umbrellas  and  things  of 
that  sort.  We  supply  policemen  to  take  care 
of  their  houses,  and  Dreadnoughts  to  defend 
their  factories.  We  put  crests  on  their 
spoons,  and  let  them  adopt  the  names  of 
pleasant  English  villages  in  place  of  their 
own.  We  even  create  Bishops  in  case  the 
souls  of  manufacturers  should  have  been 
injured  by  their  own  machines.  But  for 

5  65 


66  MONOLOGUES 

the  poets,  who  are  really  the  designers  of 
the  umbrellas  and  oil-cloth  of  to-morrow, 
we  do  nothing  whatever.  They  have  no 
homes  or  factories,  or  spoons,  and  their  souls 
are  beyond  the  reach  of  Bishops.  The  ex- 
pensive little  systems  that  guard  our  con- 
ventions are  merely  tiresome  limitations  to 
them.  All  that  we  can  give  them  is  the  gold 
that  they  alone  know  how  to  spend,  and  this 
we  withhold. 

I  feel  a  certain  diffidence  in  approaching 
the  presumed  suicide  of  John  Davidson, 
partly  because  nearly  every  one  else  who 
has  written  about  it  has  annoyed  me,  and 
partly  because  I  cannot  quite  understand  his 
motive.  It  has  been  assumed  generally  that 
the  immediate  cause  of  his  suicide  was  lack 
of  money,  and  one  might  deduce  from  his 
last  letter  that  for  another  hundred  or  two 
a  year  he  would  have  been  willing  to  con- 
tinue living  and  writing  poetry.  There  is 
something  significant  in  the  Wordsworthian 
simplicity  of  that  ideal  dinner  that  he 
designed  before  leaving  home  for  the  last 
time.  Potato  soup,  boiled  beef,  and  rice 
pudding  are  all  good  things  in  their  way. 


PENSIONS  FOR  POETS  67 

but  the  combination  is  the  meal  of  a  feeder 
rather  than  an  eater.  I  can  find  a  certain 
dignity  in  the  man  who  rejects  life  because 
it  holds  for  him  no  truffles  or  April  straw- 
berries ;  but,  in  all  sympathy,  it  is  ridiculous 
to  commit  suicide  because  one  cannot  have 
enough  rice  pudding.  Poets  kill  themselves 
because  they  have  not  got  ten  thousand  a 
year  with  which  to  exhaust  the  emotional 
possibilities  of  concrete  pleasure ;  no  one 
would  voluntarily  cease  from  living  for  lack 
of  a  plateful  of  potato  soup. 

And  it  was  this  consideration  that  made 
me  smile  at  Mr.  William  Watson's  passion- 
ately sympathetic  letter  to  the  Times.  Eng- 
land does  starve  her  poets ;  but,  on  the 
whole,  it  is  better  that  she  should  do  so 
than  that  she  should  make  them  a  pauper's 
allowance  of  boiled  beef  and  rice  pudding. 
It  was  Chatterton's  stricken  vanity  and  not 
his  hunger  that  made  him  hurry  so,  and  I 
feel  that  the  same  might  almost  be  said  of 
Davidson.  He  was  one  of  those  unfortunate 
people  who  believe  that  they  have  a  message 
to  convey  to  the  world  ;  forgetting,  perhaps, 
that  it  is  impossible  to  convey  messages  to 


68  MONOLOGUES 

a  stomach.  The  bitterness  of  the  unhonoured 
prophet  is  cumulative,  and  in  the  end  his 
message  smashed  John  Davidson.  If  it  had 
been  the  ordinary  man  with  an  idea  in  his 
head,  or,  in  polite  English,  with  a  bee  in 
his  bonnet,  we  should  have  heard  little  about 
it ;  but  it  happened  that  he  was  also  a  poet, 
and  rather  a  big  poet.  So  all  the  little  news- 
papers danced  on  his  body,  and  the  constant 
readers  asked  why  he  did  not  try  to  earn 
an  honest  living  when  he  found  that  poetry 
did  not  pay.  There  is  no  need  to  answer 
such  asses  ;  they  shall  burn  in  any  hell  of 
mine  until  they  are  weary  of  pain  itself. 
For  the  rest,  it  may  well  be  that  the  prophet 
Davidson  grew  weary  of  waiting  for  the 
tardy  ravens  ;  but  it  is  certain  that  the  poet, 
the  man  who  wrote  the  "  Ballad  of  a  Nun  " 
and  the  "  Runnable  Stag,"  did  not  kill  him- 
self for  lack  of  an  extra  hundred  a  year. 
Nor,  indeed,  is  he  dead. 

The  case  of  John  Davidson  has  reminded 
the  journals  of  to-day  that  poets  may  have 
a  kind  of  sentimental  value,  and  that  it  may 
be  creditable  in  a  country  to  save  her 
singers  from  starving.  But  in  discussing  the 


PENSIONS  FOR  POETS  69 

question  of  State  support,  they  admit, 
sensibly  enough,  that  no  officially  appointed 
body  could  be  trusted  to  distinguish  the  sheep 
from  the  goats,  the  singers  from  the  amiable 
persons  who  ought  to  write  prose.  The  tests 
any  such  body  would  apply  would  be  the 
kind  of  tests  that  govern  the  admission  of 
strange  young  men  to  suburban  drawing- 
rooms,  and  we  should  end  by  having  twenty 
poet  laureates  where  now  we  suffer  but  one, 
while  the  Ernest  Dowsons  and  Francis 
Thompsons  would  continue  to  inherit  the 
gutters  of  London.  This  is  so  certain  that 
I  cannot  blame  the  leader-writers  for  shelv- 
ing the  problem  until  the  next  young  poet 
makes  himself  into  a  rondeau  with  strych- 
nine, or  blows  his  brains  into  a  rosy  lyric. 
Nor  do  I  think  it  matters,  for  I  do  not 
believe  that  two  hundred  and  fifty  a  year 
would  do  any  poet  any  good,  and  I  doubt 
whether  the  present  age  is  sufficiently  en- 
lightened to  pay  its  poets  more.  Such  an 
income  represents  compromise,  and  com- 
promise is  bad  for  poets.  There  is  a  type 
of  poet  that  can  do  very  good  work  in 
prisons  and  doss-houses  ;  there  is  the  other 


70  MONOLOGUES 

type  that  wants  to  pelt  expensive  actresses 
to  death  with  orchids  and  drive  over  cliffs 
in  amber  motor-cars  ;  and  between  these  two 
ideals  of  spiritual  and  physical  asceticism 
there  lies  respectability  and  the  whole 
tragedy  of  modern  English  poetry.  I  sup- 
pose Wordsworth  and  Tennyson  and  Brown- 
ing have  something  to  answer  for,  but  when 
I  see  most  of  our  modern  young  poets  I  long 
to  make  them  drunk  on  methylated  spirits. 
They  are  so  neat  and  tame  and  pretty.  They 
would  find  Shelley  odd  and  Burns  coarse, 
and  Villon  would  pick  their  pockets.  There 
is  no  need  to  provide  pensions  for  young 
men  like  these  ;  they,  can  always  fall  back 
on  the  more  dashing  kind  of  journalism. 

As  for  the  others,  an  illimitable  optimism 
is  needed  to  believe  that  any,  Government 
would  give  ten  thousand  a  year  to  a  dis^ 
reputable  person  merely  because  he  had  a 
gift  of  song.  Yet  this  is  what  we  must  do 
if  we  are  going  to  concern  ourselves  with 
the  worldly  welfare  of  poets  at  all.  I  am 
not  so  much  concerned  with  the  possible 
effect  of  this  living  wage  on  their  work, 
though  one  may  be  permitted  to  wonder 


PENSIONS  FOR  POETS  71 

what  Shakespeare  or  Burns  or  even  Steven- 
son would  have  written  if  they  had  been 
really  well-to-do.  What  charms  me  is  the 
thought  of  how  delightfully  the  poets  would 
spend  the  money.  They  would  not,  as  most 
rich  men  do,  so  order  their  scale  of  living 
that  they  hardly  had  a  penny  for  those  ines- 
sential extravagances  that  are  essential  to 
children  and  the  elderly  wise.  Nor,  if  they 
were  the  right  sort  of  poet,  would  they 
wholly  forget  the  coffee  stalls  of  Bohemia 
in  the  wine  cups  of  Utopia,  though  I  trust 
that  they  would  forget  the  coffee. 

And  their  dreams.  .  .  .  It  is  really  pitiful 
to  reflect  what  a  lot  of  time  our  poets  waste 
in  dreaming  that  they  have  motor-cars  and 
yachts  and  music-halls  of  their  own,  when 
the  possession  of  these  trifles  would  enable 
them  to  solve  the  riddle  of  the  universe  in 
a  lifetime  or  so.  Our  poets  have  always 
been  underfed,  and,  in  consequence,  they 
have  given  us  a  great  account  of  life,  like, 
the  hungry  boy  who  flattens  his  nose  on  the 
cook-shop  window  and  thinks  nobly  of 
sausages.  A  generation  of  fat  poets  would 
alter  all  that,  and  perhaps  would  shake  our 


72  MONOLOGUES 

state  of  material  contentment.  To-day  we 
are  so  sure  of  ourselves  that  we  are  pre- 
pared to  classify  miracles  as  they  occur.  I 
can  imagine  some  one  running  from  the  bed 
of  Lazarus  to  a  present-day  drawing-room, 
with  the  news  that  a  man  had  just  been 
raised  from  the  dead.  The  twentieth  century 
would  comment,  "  Oh,  in  America,  I  sup- 
pose," and  Lazarus  would  creep  gladly  back 
into  his  grave.  The  satisfied  are  damned 
because  they  need  no  faith,  and  nowadays 
in  this  sense  nearly  everybody  is  satisfied  ; 
but  realizing  the  power  of  money,  I  think 
that  a  man  who  was  at  once  a  poet  and  rich 
might  contrive  a  miracle  or  two  to  set  the 
idiots  gaping,  as  healthy  idiots  should  gape, 
at  this  nightmare  of  a  world. 

I  suppose  this  theory  as  to  the  function  of 
poets  would  be  called  far-fetched,  though  I 
doubt  whether  I  should  secure  belief  if  I  said 
how  far  I  had  fetched  it.  But  the  poets 
themselves  must  be  blamed  if  their  attitude 
towards  life  is  misunderstood.  Once  it  may 
have  been  natural  for  poets  to  demand 
flowers  and  love  and  things  of  that  sort ;  now 
the  true  lover  of  Nature  is  the  man  who 


PENSIONS  FOR  POETS  73 

wants  ten  thousand  a  year  to  spend  on  the 
concrete  illustration  of  his  dreams.  Poets 
must  claim  this,  not  as  a  charity,  but  as  a 
right ;  and  if  they  do  not  secure  it  they 
have  only  to  cease  writing.  Perhaps  in  a 
few  centuries  they  will  have  their  revenge. 


IX 

HOW   TO    BE   A   POET 

MR.  WILLIAM  WATSON'S  recent  timely  remon- 
strance against  the  use  of  the  term  "  minor 
poet "  raises  the  question  of  the  com- 
plete ignorance  of  the  general  public  as 
to  what  constitutes  a  poet.  Of  course, 
there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  minor  poet ; 
it  were  as  sensible  to  talk  of  minor  dip- 
somaniacs or  minor  consumptives.  A  man 
either  has  the  will  to  express  himself  lyrically 
or  he  has  it  not.  If  he  is  smitten  with  this 
bitter-sweet  disease  he  is  a  poet.  If  he  has 
escaped  it  he  is  just  a  something  in  the  poet's 
background,  a  something  that  will  turn  to 
dust  and  then  to  daisies,  to  sway  deliciously 
in  the  wind,  because  long  ago  some  poet 
loved,  or  more  likely  thought  he  loved,  a 
girl  who  bore  the  name  of  that  flower.  For, 
even  while  the  minor  critics  are  perfecting 


74 


HOW  TO  BE  A  POET  75 

delicately  offensive  phrases  with  which  to  ex- 
press their  contempt  for  those  who  serve  the 
Muses,  the  poets  are  changing  the  venom 
and  filth  of  those  very  critics  into  spring 
flowers  and  sunsets,  and  beautiful,  hopeful 
things.  Perhaps  it  is  a  sub -conscious  sense 
of  this  magic  metamorphosis  that  makes 
little  critics  so  harsh  with  poets. 

When  a  child  is  born  to  this  earth  it  opens 
its  lips  and  weeps  lustily  ;  and  yet  there  are 
persons  who  would  deny  that  very  young 
children  have  the  gift  of  insight.  As  the 
days  and  the  months  and  the  years  pass  by 
it  is  bribed  into  the  habit  of  living  by  means 
of  sops  and  trifles.  When  its  tears  incom- 
mode its  neighbours  it  is  given  sweets  to 
hush  it ;  when  its  play,  is  too  noisy  it  is 
punished  into  silence.  So  in  time  it  learns 
the  great  rule  of  compromise,  and  if  it  is 
a  healthy,  normal  child  it  dies  at  three-score- 
years -and -ten,  without  ever  having  laughed 
so  loudly  as  to  awaken  jealousy  in  its  fellows, 
without  ever  having  wept  so  long  as  to 
imply  a  criticism  of  the  wisdom  of  the 
methods  of  God.  Whether  its  existence  has 
made  any  difference  is  a  problem  for  those 


76  MONOLOGUES 

scientists  who  can  weigh  dirt  to  the  billionth 
part  of  a  grain. 

But  now  and  again  there  is  born  a  child 
whose  tears  may  not  be  stayed  with  sweets, 
whose  laughter  triumphs  over  chastisement. 
Walking  a  little  aloof,  singing  and  laughing 
and  weeping,  it  troubles  the  great  silence 
that  lulls  the  hearts  of  men.  It  flouts  the 
idol  that  its  fathers  have  served  for  genera- 
tions ;  it  worships  a  wind-torn  poppy  that 
only  a  reaper's  whim  has  spared.  While 
other  children  grow  more  and  more  akin 
about  it,  every  day  seems  to  set  this  child 
farther  from  its  neighbours,  every  day  it 
grows  more  like  the  flowers  and  winds  and 
the  trees  of  the  world.  And  so  while  the 
children  of  civilization  grow  old  and  pass, 
it  stays  among  the  hills  and  silent  places 
and  does  not  die.  On  the  world  of  men 
and  women  into  which  it  would  seem  to 
have  wandered  by  mistake  its  influence  might 
be  ignored.  And  yet  for  centuries  the  young 
man  shall  woo  the  maidens  with  the  love  and 
the  song  that  it  gave  the  world,  and  the 
maidens  themselves  shall  have  wide  eyes  and 
crimson  lips,  because  it  was  so  that  the 


HOW  TO   BE   A  POET  77 

wonder-child    liked    them    to    be.      Of   such 
children  are  the  poets. 

To  divide  humanity  into  groups  and  put 
each  group  to  bed  with  a  sweeping  generali- 
zation is  a  popular  but  dangerous  amuse- 
ment, and  especially  is  it  deadly  to  provide 
verbal  paramours  for  the  group  of  splendid 
accidents  we  call  poets.  In  the  first  place, 
it  is  not  easy  to  say  what  a  poet  is.  I 
suppose  most  definitions  would  imply  in 
some  way  or  other  that  he  was  a  writer  of 
poems.  But  even  here  there  is  a  doubt.  The 
desire  for  expression  exists  in  so  many  differ- 
ent degrees.  For  instance,  Edward  Fitz- 
gerald was  satisfied  with  the  compliments  of 
a  small  circle  of  intimate  friends,  while  poor 
John  Davidson  wished  a  nation  to  accept 
his  truth.  I  can  conceive  a  man  devoting 
his  whole  life  to  the  effort  to  express  him- 
self lyrically  to  one  person,  a  woman  per- 
haps. What  a  fine  thing  it  would  be  for  a 
poet  to  pass  his  hours  in  writing  the  eternal 
song  on  the  heart  of  a  girl  ;  and  what  a 
fine  girl  !  It  seems  ridiculous  to  suppose 
that  if  Shelley  had  never  learnt  how  to  write 
he  would  not  have  been  a  poet. 


78  MONOLOGUES 

Yet  if  we  admit  that  a  poet  need  not 
write  poems  we  must  allow  that  nearly  every 
one  is  at  times  a  poet,  and  so  in  a  sense 
nearly  every  one  is.  I  heard  a  story  the 
other  day  of  a  little  London  child  who  was 
taken  out  to  the  country  for  the  first  time, 
and  set  down  in  a  field  to  play.  She  looked 
about  her  in  a  dazed  way  at  the  green  fields 
and  hedges,  and  then  was  physically  sick.  If 
that  child  had  possessed  the  gift  of  verbal 
expression  she  would  have  written  a  poem  ; 
but  even  so  I  doubt  whether  she  could  have 
paid  Nature  a  finer  compliment  than  this. 
I  have  noticed  that  in  moments  of  great 
sorrow  the  uneducated  achieve  a  singular 
dignity  and  felicity  of  phrase,  and  it  is 
reasonable  to  suppose  that  it  is  their  ignor- 
ance of  craftsmanship  rather  than  any  lack 
of  emotional  force  that  prevents  them  from 
expressing  themselves  lyrically.  In  spite  of 
our  stultifying  civilization  there  are  a  few 
superlative  moments  in  the  lives  of  every  one 
which  only  failure  to  acquire  the  habit  of 
writing  verse  prevents  them  from  expressing 
in  poetry. 

But  apart  from  the  joy  of  believing  that 


HOW  TO  BE  A  POET  79 

there  are  possibilities  for  good  in  every  one, 
it  must  be  acknowledged  that  this  latent  poet 
is  so  firmly  suppressed  in  the  bosoms  of 
the  respectable  that  he  might  almost  as  well 
not  be  there  at  all,  and  we  are  therefore 
justified  in  demanding  that  to  earn  the  title 
of  poet  a  man  should  write  poems.  Beyond 
this  the  adjudgment  of  poets  always  seems 
to  me  a  question  of  how  far  the  individual 
poets  have  siicceeded  in  expressing  the  ego 
of  the  critic.  Thus  I  probably  think  far  too 
much  of  Dowson  because  he  wrote  "Cynara"  ; 
a  poem,  however,  which  only  the  maddest  of 
prigs  could  call  minor.  And  similarly,  while 
I  own  to  loving  Francis  Thompson  for  his 
poems  about  children,  it  is  a  poem  called 
"  Memorat  Memoria  "  that  takes  my  breath 
away,  because  I  am  one  of  the  very  unfor- 
tunate persons  who  really  know  what  it 
means.  Yet  I  know  both  Dowson  and 
Thompson  did  much  better  work  than  this. 
This  is  the  difficulty,  this  conflict  between  the 
emotional  and  the  intellectual  judgments,  that 
must  always  trouble  critics  who  endeavour 
to  divide  poets  into  classes,  saving  always 
those  god -like  critics  who  own  to  no  emo- 


80  MONOLOGUES 

tions,  and  may  therefore  be  safely  permitted 
to  bore  each  other  till  newspapers  cease  to 
appear.  It  is  not  always  the  so-called  great 
poets  who  knock  us  off  our  intellectual 
perches.  There  lies  beside  me  a  little  volume 
of  poems  published  exactly  fifty  years  ago 
by  Thomas  Ashe,  a  name  that,  till  I  looked 
between  the  covers,  bore  for  me  only  the 
dimmest  significance.  Yet  there  are  surpris- 
ingly beautiful  things  in  that  little  book,  and 
I  think  a  modern  poet  could  make  a  reputa- 
tion in  this  untuneful  age  by  reproducing 
his  curiously  individual  music.  Critics  of 
poetry  are  nearly  useless,  because  their 
blood,  save  by  rare  coincidence,  can  never 
run  the  course  of  yours  or  mine. 

And  now,  I  suppose,  the  time  has  come 
to  justify  a  title,  carefully  calculated  to 
strike  the  thoughtless  as  impertinent.  For 
while  I  should  hesitate  before  giving  advice 
to  would-be  engine -drivers^  the  question  I 
have  undertaken  to  answer  seems  to  me  an 
easy  one.  "  Take  something,"  I  would  say 
to  the  young  man  desirous  of  Parnassus, 
"  take  anything  and  love  it !  "  and  thereafter, 
if  he  were  a  child  of  his  century,  I  should 


HOW  TO  BE   A  POET  81 

have  to  tell  him  of  love,  the  rude,  uncivi- 
lized force  that  has  inspired  all  the  deeds 
worth  doing,  that  has  made  all  the  things 
worth  making.  I  should  tell  him  that  it 
was  nonsense  to  speak  of  anything  or  any- 
body being  "  worthy  of  his  love,"  that  the 
question  was  whether  he  could  make  his 
love  worthy  of  any  shadow  of  an  idea  that 
might  penetrate  his  education.  I  should  tell 

him 

To  what  end?  That  he  might  see  life  as 
he  would  have  made  it,  and  weep  his  years 
away  ;  that  he  might  find  beauty  and  fail 
to  win  it ;  that  he  might  cry  his  scorn  of 
ugliness  on  the  hills  and  have  never  a  hearer 
for  his  pains?  Pooh  !  it  were  kinder  to 
let  him  snore  with  the  others.  There  are 
too  many  unhappy  people  already. 


X 

TRAITORS    OF   ART 

PROBABLY  every  one  remembers  Swift's  famous 
essay  on  a  broomstick.  But  it  is  to  be  feared 
that  this,  which  was  thought  a  masterpiece 
of  ingenious  fancy  in  its  time,  would  pass 
unnoticed  in  these  sophisticated  days.  For, 
nowadays,  everybody  writes  about  broom- 
sticks, and  indeed  the  writer  who  does  not 
do  so  is  in  danger  of  failing  in  that  final 
task  of  belly-filling  that  relates  the  artist 
inevitably  to  the  man.  In  other  words, 
specialization,  the  art  of  losing  the  infinite 
in  search  of  the  finite,  has  become  the  only, 
art  that  the  brute  many  who  hold  the 
golden  pieces  deem  worthy  of  reward. 
Treated  in  this  way,  the  eternal  things  that 
thrilled  and  troubled  our  fathers  become 
manageable,  and  duly  subservient  to  the 

88 


TRAITORS   OF  ART  83 

popular  will.  It  is  difficult  to  patronize 
death,  but  easy  to  prattle  of  cremation  and 
curious  epitaphs.  Love,  resisting  the  steady 
pressure  of  civilizing  forces,  remains  un- 
moral, but  we  have  invented  a  definite 
morality  for  marriage,  and  it  serves.  Nor 
have  we  spared  such  semi-concrete  things 
as  the  stars  and  the  blue  sky.  We  have 
weighed  the  atmosphere  and  measured  the 
stars,  setting  limits  to  their  wonder,  and 
it  would  take  a  week-long  eclipse  of 
the  sun  to  shake  our  reliance  on  the 
astronomers. 

Observing  that  the  passion  for  specializa- 
tion and  the  specialist  is  regarded  in  England 
as  tending  to  efficiency,  it  is  hardly  necessary 
to  add  that  it  is  insane.  The  wholly  effi- 
cient man,  if  he  exists  anywhere,  which  God 
forbid,  is  certainly  insane,  for  a  man's  soul 
lies  neither  in  his  strength  nor  his  weak- 
ness, but  balanced  featly  between  the  two, 
like  a  ball  in  the  hands  of  a  child.  A  man 
without  strength  is  an  idiot,  but  a  man 
without  weakness  would  be  a  god — in  an 
asylum. 

In    terms    of    life    a    specialist    might    be 


84  MONOLOGUES 

defined  as  a  person  of  unusually  widespread 
ignorance,  but  his  tragedy  really  lies  in  the 
fact  that  his  absorption  in  one  subject  in- 
evitably prevents  him  from  knowing  anything 
about  that  subject.  Thus,  to  take  simple 
illustrations,  a  bibliophile  is  a  man  who 
knows  nothing  about  books  ;  an  astronomer 
is  a  man  who  cannot  see  the  stars ;  a 
botanist  is  a  man  for  whom  the  earth  pro- 
vides no  flowers  ;  and  yet  it  is  to  such  folk 
that  our  modern  simplicity  would  have  us 
go  for  information.  Concentration,  even 
though  it  be  a  life-time  long,  can  only  give 
a  man  a  knowledge  of  inessential  things  ; 
truth  can  only  be  won  from  those  inspired 
moments  that  build  up  eternity.  I  suppose 
it  is  a  too  thorough  acceptance  of  the 
doctrine  of  free-will  that  has  led  us  to 
confuse  a  knowledge  of  facts  with  the 
realization  of  truth.  We  feel  that  if  we 
learn  all  that  there  is  to  be  known  about 
a  thing,  the  truth  must  be  ours,  though 
our  very  knowledge  is  likely  to  make  it 
obscure.  A  man  may  concentrate  all  his 
faculties  on  an  abandoned  pump  for  thirty 
years,  before  a  little  dog,  with  a  flash  of 


TRAITORS  OF  ART  85 

intuition,  shows  him  how  it  can  be  made 
useful.  The  knowledge  that  we  deliber- 
ately seek  is  rarely  of  any  value  ;  wisdom 
lies  in  appreciation  of  the  significance  of 
the  accidental. 

All  this  seems,  perhaps,  a  little  remote 
from  literature,  but  its  application  to  the 
present  state  of  English  art  is  only  too 
exact.  At  no  period  of  English  literature 
have  our  authors  been  so  greatly  confused 
by  what  are  pessimistically  designated  the 
"  facts  "  of  life.  These  may  be  divided  into 
such  natural  phenomena  as  cold  and  hunger, 
and  such  generally  lauded  conventions  as 
cleanliness  and  education,  and  their  effect  on 
the  minds  of  our  writers  has  been  to  make 
them  minor  prophets  and  great  bores.  Thus 
the  persons  who  ought  to  be  gratifying  our 
taste  for  triolets  and  fairy  stories  think  it 
their  duty  to  produce  didactic  plays  and 
novels,  from  which  one  would  judge  that 
the  first  task  of  man  is  rather  to  improve 
his  neighbour  than  himself.  The  weakness 
of  propagandist  art  lies  in  the  fact  that  his 
message  leads  the  author  to  pay  too  much 
attention  to  the  whims  and  prejudices  of  his 


86  MONOLOGUES 

readers.  It  was  possibly  necessary  that  the 
English  people  should  be  reminded  of  the 
"  facts "  that  are  the  foundation  of  "  Mrs. 
Warren's  Profession,"  but  in  order  to  bring 
them  home  to  his  audience  the  author  has 
spoiled  his  play.  Mr.  Shaw  is  a  good,  or, 
if  you  prefer  it,  a  bad  example  of  the  artistic 
martyrdoms  that  will  make  the  present 
literary  period  notorious  one  of  these  days. 
He  has  sold  his  soul  to  his  conscience  for  a 
mess  of  unconventional  morality.  Certainly 
he  does  not  credit  the  facts  of  which  he  is 
indeed  the  slave. 

But  this  dissatisfaction  with  the  purely 
honourable  task  of  creating  beautiful  things 
is  in  the  air,  and  can  hardly  be  dismissed 
with  a  phrase.  It  is  expressed  with  con- 
siderable force  in  the  latest  novel  of  Mr. 
John  Masefield,  who  has  written  fine  poetry 
before  now.  It  has  damned  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells, 
soured  Mr.  John  Galsworthy,  and  made  Mr. 
Chesterton  frequently  tiresome.  It  has  killed 
Davidson,  and  afflicted  us  with  the  "  City 
of  Dreadful  Brass  "  from  the  hand  that  wrote 
"  Sussex."  Only  time  will  tell  us  what  its 
influence  may  be  on  the  younger  men.  But 


TRAITORS  OF   ART  87 

to  me  the  serious  aspect  of  this  scepticism  as 
to  the  honesty  of  the  artistic  ideal  is  that 
it  has  made  most  of  our  men  of  letters 
traitors  to  their  cause.  I  suppose  that  at 
all  times  there  have  been  persons,  a  great 
many  persons,  who  thought  that  the  lives  of 
artists  were  useless,  but  it  has  remained  for 
the  artists  of  to-day  to  say  as  much  them- 
selves. How  can  we  hope  to  succeed  in  our 
task  of  teaching  the  men  and  women  and 
the  children  of  England  to  appreciate  the 
beautiful,  if  we  commence  with  the  admis- 
sion that  beauty  does  not  count?  The  so- 
called  decadents  of  another  age  were  skilled 
to  find  roses  in  the  mud  ;  we,  with  our  more 
wholesome,  utilitarian  outlook,  are  eager  to 
find  mud  in  every  rose,  in  order  to  bring 
the  blunders  of  civilization  home  to  the 
minds  of  the  civilized. 

Lord  Curzon  once  told  a  grateful  audi- 
ence that  there  was  no  reason  why  Eng- 
land should  feel  depressed,  but  to  those 
of  us  who  believe  that  Shakespeare,  Keats, 
and  Swinburne  have  done  more  for  their 
country  than  Nelson,  Wellington,  and  Glad- 
stone, it  matters  little  whether  England  is 


88  MONOLOGUES 

sorry  because  there  are  yet  worthless  things 
to  which  she  cannot  attain,  or  proud  of  the 
worthless  things  to  which  she  has  attained. 
But  that  those  men  who  ought  to  be  leaders 
in  the  camp  of  truth  should  encourage  her 
in  her  esteem  of  inessentials,  that  they, 
should  speak  to  her  of  the  little  passing 
diseases  that  they  dread,  when  love  is 
out  in  the  world  and  the  great  salt  winds 
are  beating  in  from  the  sea,  that  is  the  last 
treachery. 

I  will  give  an  illustration.  I  suppose,  if 
these  people  have  not  written  in  vain,  that 
the  Embankment  has  come  to  be  considered 
a  kind  of  rallying-ground  for  nocturnal 
misery,  a  place  where  vice  and  misfortune 
rub  shoulders  and  wait  for  bowls  of  soup. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  Embankment  by 
night  is  the  finest  thing  in  all  London,  and 
in  some  measure  London's  justification.  I 
had  always  appreciated  the  sombre  beauty 
of  the  river  with  its  shadows  and  reflections, 
but  it  was  a  poet  of  my  acquaintance  who 
first  pointed  out  to  me  the  exquisite  tracery 
of  the  shadows  thrown  by  the  branches  of 
the  plane-trees  on  the  grey  pavements.  Given 


TRAITORS  OF  ART  89 

a  slight  breeze  to  set  the  branches  swaying, 
there  can  be  nothing  more  beautiful  than 
this  in  the  whole  round  world.  Now  I  con- 
fess that  I  have  not  conquered  my  natural 
aversion  for  all  forms  of  human  discomfort, 
whether  exemplified  in  my  own  body  or  in 
those  of  other  people,  but  let  me  add  that 
in  face  of  that  lovely  changing  tapestry,  these 
brief  sorrows  and  even  these  brief  lives  seem 
to  me  of  small  importance.  We  are  born 
to  starve  and  shiver  for  a  while  in  the 
gutters  of  life  and  presently  we  die.  But 
beauty  is  eternal,  and  it  is  only  by  means 
of  our  appreciation  of  beauty  that  we  can 
bear  with  our  clumsy,  rotting  bodies  while 
our  life  lasts.  All  other  creeds  seem  to  me 
forlorn  and  self-destructive. 

And  to  the  young  men  for  whom  I  write, 
since  the  follies  of  age  extend  to  the  grave, 
I  would  commend  those  delicate  shadows  on 
the  stones  of  the  Embankment,  as  giving  this 
sordid  city  life  a  certain  eternal  significance. 
Doubtless  the  loathsome  details  of  that  life 
threaten  to  choke  them,  as  they  seem  to 
have  choked  most  of  our  older  artists.  But 
while  God  is  content  to  spread  His  beauty 


90  MONOLOGUES 

beneath  our  feet,  as  He  spread  it  beneath 
the  feet  of  Shakespeare,  of  Keats,  and  of 
Swinburne,  there  is  hope  for  those  of  us 
who  can  see  it. 


XI 

SUICIDE    AND    THE    STATE 

IN  the  "Shropshire  Lad,"  by  Mr.  A.  E. 
Housman,  a  poet  who  alone  among  his 
loquacious  kind  sings  too  little,  there  is  a 
curious  expression  of  opinion  on — one  might 
almost  say  defence  of— suicide*.  I  have  not  the 
book  by  me,  and  I  admire  Mr.  Housman 
too  much  to  re -write  his  poem  from  memory, 
but  I  hope  that  readers  will  know  their 
"  Shropshire  Lad "  too  well  to  need  more 
than  a  reference  to  the  poem  to  recall  it 
to  their  memories.  A  young  man  who  has 
become  troublesome  to  his  neighbours,  and, 
worst  of  all,  troublesome  to  himself,  has 
closed  his  brief  history  with  a  bullet.  "  Well 
done,  lad,"  says  the  poet ;  "  that  was  brave  !  " 
Now,  I  am  sufficiently  the  slave  of  an  age 
I  hate  to  feel  a  certain  timidity  in  approach - 

91 


92  MONOLOGUES 

ing  this  subject  of  suicide,  or  self-murder 
as  fat  people  prefer  to  call  it.  It  is  a  thing 
that  the  normal,  however  broadminded  they 
may  be,  do  not  like  to  discuss,  for  of  all 
destructive  criticism  of  life  this  is  the 
most  weighty.  Other  criminals,  murderers, 
thieves,  and  the  like,  we  can  punish  or  even 
forgive,  because  we  know  that  each  one  of 
us  under  unfavourable  conditions  might 
commit  murder  or  theft ;  opportunity  alone 
makes  the  upright  man.  But  a  suicide  does 
more  than  attack  our  persons  or  our  pockets  ; 
he  injures  our  self-complacency  and  murders 
our  vanity.  We  can  forgive  a  man  for  boo- 
ing or  creating  a  disturbance  in  the  theatre 
of  life,  but  we  cannot  forgive  him  for  going 
out  with  a  yawn  before  the  play  is  over. 
In  effect,  he  says,  "  I  find  your  society  dull 
and  your  follies  do  not  amuse  me.  You  are 
a  lot  of  tiresome  fellows  !  "  And  the  devil 
of  the  business  is  that  if  the  rascal  is  suc- 
cessful we  cannot  punish  him  for  his  imper- 
tinence. We  can,  and  I  believe  sometimes 
do,  send  people  to  prison  for  failing  to  kill 
themselves,  in  order  that  they  may  there 
acquire  a  fuller  appreciation  of  their  fellow 


SUICIDE   AND  THE  STATE  93 

human  beings.  But  with  all  our  wisdom 
we  have,  as  yet,  no  certain  means  of  chasten- 
ing the  untimely  dead.  Like  the  mythical 
woman,  the  suicides  always  have  the  last 
word  in  the  argument,  and,  while  we  con- 
demn their  folly,  wre  have  the  uncomfort- 
able conviction  that  they  cannot  hear  us. 

Of  course,  it  is  impossible  for  any  person, 
breathing  air  and  holding  the  flowers  of  the 
world  for  his  reward,  to  defend  suicide, 
but  it  is  another  thing  to  suggest  by  our 
silence  that  suicides  do  not  exist.  We  believe 
no  man  to  be  weary  of  life  until  he  has  pulled 
the  trigger  or  emptied  the  cup.  When  he 
is  dead  a  jury  of  British  tradesmen  breathe 
the  word  "  insanity  "  for  epitaph  over  his 
body,  and  then  go  home  to  dinner  without  any 
troublesome  doubts  as  to  the  value  of  life. 
Yet  every  honest  man  knows  that  nineteen 
suicides  out  of  twenty  are  perfectly  sane. 
The  majority  lives  for  what  life  gives  it, 
the  minority  dies  for  what  life  withholds  ; 
and,  while  for  once  in  a  way  it  is  possible 
to  agree  with  the  majority,  it  must  be  ad- 
mitted that  the  point  of  view  of  the  minority 
is  not  irrational.  It  is  pessimism  rather  than 


94  MONOLOGUES 

wisdom  that  keeps  us  alive  ;  it  is  optimism 
and  not  madness  that  leads  the  suicide  to 
seek  for  better  things  in  the  grave. 

But  once  it  is  admitted  that  many  of  the 
individuals  who  commit  suicide  are  not  only 
sane,    but    even    possessed    of    considerable 
intellectual    gifts,    it    seems    natural    to    ask 
whether  their  lives  might  not  be  expended 
usefully  in  the  service  of  humanity  instead 
of  being  merely  abandoned  in  dark  corners. 
At    present — it    is    poor    civilization's    only 
revenge — a    certain    stigma    attaches    to    the 
family    of    a    person    who    has    committed 
suicide.       But    if   instead    of   being    posthu- 
mously dubbed  insane  or  a  criminal  a  man 
were   said   to   have  devoted   his   life   to   the 
State,  we  might  come  to  feel  rather  proud  of 
these  unhappy  critics.     Let  us  put  aside  all 
our  beloved  nonsense  about  the  sacredness 
of    human    life.      Leaving    the    extravagant 
waste  of  war  out  of  the  question,  every  rail- 
way journey,  every,  ton  of  coal,  and  every 
unit  of  electricity  costs  a  fraction  of  a  man's 
life.     We  achieve  a  greater  degree  of  com- 
fort  by   our   cunning,   but   the   colliery,   the 
railway  line,  and  the  dynamo,  all  take  their 


SUICIDE  AND  THE  STATE  95 

toll  in  accidents,  and  part  of  the  wages  of 
the  men  we  pay  to  work  them  is  a  greater 
risk  of  death  than  we  run  who  are  con- 
tent to  use  them.  Consideration  for  the  lives 
of  individuals  has  never  been  allowed  to 
interfere  with  the  convenience  of  the  many. 
Yet  I  can  conceive  the  outcry  of  the  coal- 
burning,  railway -using  sentimentalists  against 
the  foundation  of  a  State  department  for  the 
useful  expenditure  of  the  lives  of  those 
persons  who  are  weary  of  an  existence  that 
it  is  hardly  creditable  to  endure.  But 
imagine  the  simplicity  of  the  scheme.  There 
would  be  an  office  in  London  which  would- 
be  suicides  would  seek  in  place  of  the  gun- 
maker's  shop  or  the  river.  Thence,  after 
filling  up  a  form,  they  would  be  drafted  to 
an  establishment  in  which  they  would  be 
maintained  at  Government  expense,  and,  after 
a  week  of  probation,  they  would  become 
officially  dead.  Once  there,  they  would  be 
beyond  the  reach  of  the  law,  and  their  wives 
would  be  free  to  marry  again,  while  in  cases 
of  destitution  provision  would  be  made  for 
the  families  they  had  left  behind  them.  The 
living  bodies  of  these  dead  men  would  then 


96  MONOLOGUES 

be  at  the  service  of  the  State.  They  would 
be  available  for  the  doctors  in  place  of  dogs 
and  monkeys  for  experimental  germ-breed- 
ing and  vivisection ;  they  could  test  high 
explosives  and  conduct  dangerous  chemical 
operations  ;  in  time  of  war  they  could  man 
steerable  torpedoes  or  dynamite-laden  aero- 
planes. In  fact,  they  could  be  used  in  any 
work  that  involved  great  risk  to  life.  They 
would,  of  course,  be  prisoners,  but  it  is  no 
part  of  my  scheme  that  they  should  be 
hurried  into  the  next  world  by  means  of  the 
ordinary  prison  diet.  Perhaps  a  maximum 
limit  would  be  put  to  their  existence  at  the 
option  of  individual  patients.  But  their  very 
death  might  be  made  medically  useful. 

All  this  sounds  possibly  a  little  inhuman, 
but  it  is  really  only  a  question  of  facing 
facts.  You  cannot  persuade  a  person  who 
has  found  out  life  to  continue  living  by 
giving  him  tracts.  Personally  I  should 
have  more  sympathy  with  suicides  if  they 
killed  themselves  when  they  were  very, 
very  happy,  in  order  to  avoid  anti-climax. 
But  it  must  be  realized  that  there  is  a 
minority — a  minority  that  our  growing  seep- 


SUICIDE  AND  THE  STATE  97 

ticism  will  materially  increase— that  finds 
life  an  intolerably  tiresome  business.  The 
simplest  study  of  the  epistolary  literature  left 
behind  by  these  persons  will  convince  any 
one  that  they  are,  as  a  class,  the  vainest  of 
creatures,  and  this  vanity  could  hardly  fail 
to  be  attracted  by  the  scheme  I  have  out- 
lined above.  It  is  of  no  use  to  say  that 
people  ought  not  to  kill  themselves.  They 
will  do  it,  and  this  being  so,  we  may  as 
well  make  their  whim  as  valuable  to  the 
bulk  of  humanity  as  possible. 


XII 
THE   AGE    OF   DISENCHANTMENT 

LET  me  start  by  saying  that  my  title  does 
not  refer  to  that  delicate  period  in  the  life 
of  a  human  being  at  which  the  illusions  of 
childhood,  the  appealing  and  comfortable 
faith  in  one's  eiders,  the  belief  in  the  bene- 
ficent care  of  machine-made  gods  fall  away 
and  are  no  more,  and  earth,  vast,  unknown, 
yet  still  strangely  alluring,  yawns  before  the 
feet  of  adventurous  youth.  For  one  thing, 
the  disillusionment  is  never  complete.  The 
childish  illusions  fade,  the  no  less  visionary 
and  delightful  illusions  of  youth  take  their 
place,  and  so  to  our  graves.  But,  while  it 
falls  to  no  individual  man  or  woman  to  see 
things  as  they  are,  or  perhaps  I  should  say, 
to  find  that  things  are  not,  it  is  possible  for 
groups  of  men  and  women,  for  cities,  races, 
and  nations,  to  achieve  this  morbid  insight. 

99 


100  MONOLOGUES 

The  units  that  compose  the  faithless,  rebel- 
lious whole  continue  to  soothe  their  bruised 
souls  with  the  eternal  legends ;  hope  and 
faith  and  love,  they  say,  are  of  the  soul  of 
man,  and  set  him  definitely  apart  from  the 
lower  animals  who  hope  and  love  and  wor- 
ship around  him,  and  for  these  universal 
qualities  he  will  ultimately  receive  a  glorious 
and  especial  reward.  So  they  comfort  the 
moment's  tears,  and  he  would  be  cruel  indeed 
who  should  seek  to  deny  them  this  weak 
solace  for  the  pain  of  living.  But,  oddly, 
the  faith  of  a  nation  seems  to  have  no  part 
in  these  personal  and  enduring  beliefs.  It 
appears  rather  to  be  the  sum  of  those 
sombre,  unshapen  doubts  that  no  man  dares 
to  express.  To-day,  in  England,  it  would 
be  impossible  to  find  a  human  being  who 
did  not  believe  some  theory,  some  idea,  some 
miracle,  in  support  of  which  his  reason  could 
produce  no  evidence.  It  is  equally  impos- 
sible to  discover  that,  as  a  nation,  we  believe 
in  anything  whatever.  We  have  outworn  the 
faith  of  our  fathers,  and  our  eyes  can  dis- 
cover no  star  to  guide  us  anew.  The  age  of 
disenchantment  is  now. 


THE  AGE  OF  DISENCHANTMENT    101 

Where  should  we  seek  to  find  the  soul 
of  a  nation  most  clearly  expressed?  First, 
of  course,  in  its  literature,  and,  above  all, 
in  its  poetry,  though  we  must  remember  that 
it  is  always  the  second-rate  work  that  shows 
the  closest  connection  with  the  age  that  pro- 
duces it,  genius  knowing  no  time  and  repre- 
senting no  age  in  particular.  Secondly,  I 
think,  in  its  politicians,  who  aspire  to  and 
achieve  a  fine  honesty  of  mediocrity  ;  and, 
lastly,  in  the  lives  and  speech  of  the  people 
in  general,  and  in  the  newspapers,  which 
represent  faithfully  enough  the  interests  and 
desires  of  the  uneducated  classes.  It  will 
perhaps  be  convenient  if  I  consider  these 
expressions  of  our  national  impulses  one  at 
a  time. 

And  first,  and  most  sadly,  as  to  our  litera- 
ture. To  my  mind  there  is  no  more  striking 
token  of  our  national  disenchantment  than 
the  abandonment  by  our  artists  of  the  belief 
in  beauty  for  beauty's  sake.  This,  when  es- 
sentials are  considered,  was  the  faith  of 
Milton  and  Shakespeare,  or,  to  come  nearer 
to  our  own  days,  of  Keats  and  Robert  Brown- 
ing and  Swinburne.  Among  the  representa- 


102  MONOLOGUES 

live  writers  of  our  time  it  has  been  aban- 
doned as  passionately  as  our  predecessors 
sought  to  express  it.  And  what  has  taken 
its  place?  No  doubt  it  may  be  said  that  Mr. 
Shaw  and  Mr.  Kipling  and  Mr.  Wells  have 
a  personal  faith.  No  man  can  live  as  near 
space  as  we  do  without  some  protecting 
screen  of  belief.  But  under  what  banner 
of  enchantment  do  these  writers  make  their 
appeal,  to  what  echo  in  the  heart  of  man 
do  they  cry  for  an  answer?  To  me,  Mr. 
Kipling  recalls  the  consuming  folly  of  the 
first  half  of  the  South  African  war,  and  Mr. 
Bernard  Shaw  the  shamed  cowardice  of  the 
second  half  of  that  luckless  victory.  Their 
messages  are  alike  contemptuous  ;  but  Mr. 
Shaw  despises  his  audience  more  than  Mr. 
Kipling,  and  gives  them  more  careful  work. 
Mr.  Wells  is  more  truly  representative  of 
his  day  than  they  arc,  possibly  because,  as 
an  artist,  he  is  inferior  to  either  of  them. 
His  message  is  the  poignant  cry  of  a  race 
that  can  win  to  no  belief.  Yesterday  a 
Fabian,  to-day  a  Liberal,  to-morrow  a  Tory, 
he  is  inspired  by  a  faintly  aesthetic  distaste 
of  life  and  ridden  hard  by  a  conscience  in 


THE  AGE   OF  DISENCHANTMENT    103 

which  he  does  not  believe.  His  view  of 
things  is  negative  ;  I  could  set  down  fifty 
things  that  he  dislikes,  I  do  not  know  one 
thing  that  he  appreciates.  He  has  found  out 
life,  but  he  has  not  found  heaven.  He  is  the 
artist  of  disenchantment,  the  Wells  at  which 
no  man  can  quench  his  thirst.  I  have  taken 
these  three  writers  (I  should  add,  by  the 
way,  that  Mr.  Kipling  once  was  enchanted), 
because  they  stand  for  modern  literary 
tendencies  ;  but  the  case  of  our  young  poets 
is  even  sadder  and  more  to  the  point.  We 
have  none. 

When  I  come  to  the  politicians  the  bitter 
ink  in  my  fountain-pen  turns  to  honey,  for 
I  am  very  sorry  for  them,  even  more  sorry 
than  they  are  for  themselves.  Their  case  is 
more  simple  than  that  of  artists,  for  artists 
are  always  exceptional  men,  whereas  politics 
demands  of  her  children  that,  save  in  rare 
instances,  they  should  be  fiercely  common- 
place. The  hardness  of  their  lot  lies  in 
this :  that,  although  they  represent  with 
passionate  honesty  the  views  and  faltering 
ambitions  of  ordinary  men,  no  one  will 
believe  in  them,  and  under  pressure  of 


104  MONOLOGUES 

circumstances  they  no  longer  believe  in 
themselves.  To  a  certain  extent,  no  doubt, 
this  is  due  to  the  party  system ;  the 
delicate  invention  that  commands  a  man 
who  disliked  Chinese  Labour  to  believe 
in  the  nationalization  of  land,  and  a  man 
who  mistrusts  Home  Rule  for  Ireland  to 
accept  Tariff  Reform.  But,  chiefly,  it  is 
due  to  the  spirit  of  the  age,  the  spirit  that 
holds  that  all  things  are  bad,  that  no  act  of 
ours  can  make  them  better,  and  that  it  is 
our  duty  to  spend  our  lives  in  the  attempt. 
We  elect  our  representatives,  and  then  turn 
our  faces  to  the  wall  in  the  mournful  belief 
that  after  all  they  do  not  represent  us,  and 
when  the  time  comes  it  takes  all  the  scream- 
ing eloquence  of  the  newspapers  to  convince 
us  that  a  crisis  is  at  hand.  Then  we  vote 
again,  and  once  more  return  shrugging  to 
our  uneasy  slumbers.  Politicians  to-day  are 
the  interrogation  marks  the  nation  sets  in 
the  book  of  Destiny.  It  is  our  doubts  that 
return  members  of  Parliament ;  they,  are 
living  symbols  of  our  Jack  of  belief  in  the 
utility  of  man's  endeavours. 

And,  lastly,  we  come  to  the  people  them- 


THE  AGE   OF  DISENCHANTMENT     105 

selves,  the  stuff  that  fills  our  houses  and 
streets  and  overflows  into  our  gutters.  To 
me  their  state  of  disenchantment  is  pitiful. 
They  flee  death  and  praise  it,  they  seek 
pleasure  and  condemn  it,  they  demand 
beauty  and  kill  it.  No  cynicism  is  too  wild 
for  their  lips,  no  act  of  fanatical  tyranny 
too  harsh  for  their  hearts.  It  is  not  that 
they  outrage  literature  with  a  pair  of  North- 
cliffe  scissors  ;  it  is  not  that  they  pay  jour- 
nalists to  tell  them  lies  they  do  not  intend  to 
believe  ;  it  is  not  even  that  they  are  ceasing 
to  go  to  the  churches,  though  all  these  things 
are  true.  But  they  are  forgetting  how  to 
love  and  how  to  hate,  and  this  is  the  measure 
of  their  unemotional  decadence.  Behind 
their  callous  simulations  of  passion  lies 
hidden  the  calculating  cowardice  of  the 
financier  in  the  same  way  that  behind  their 
definitions  of  honour  there  lurks  the  swell- 
mobsman  who  fears  the  cudgel  of  honest 
men.  Love  is  degraded  to  the  registry -office 
in  more  than  word ;  hatred,  in  itself,  an 
affirmation  of  good,  is  recognized  as  unprofit- 
able, with  the  policeman  waiting  round  the 
corner.  A  cold  scepticism  is  burning  the 


106  MONOLOGUES 

hearts  of  men  and  women  to  ashes  of  that 
desire  that  painted  the  trees  green  and  the 
lips  of  women  red,  and  set  the  stars  moving 
over  all.  We  are  disenchanted. 


XIII 
ON   DREAMS 

SOME  time  ago  I  wrote  an  article  in 
which  I  ventured  to  suggest  that  within 
certain  limits  we  can  make  our  dreams  what 
we  will,  and  that  a  considerable  aesthetic 
pleasure  may  be  derived  from  regarding  this 
world  of  tables  and  chairs  that  surrounds 
us  as  illusory,  the  dream-world  to  which  we 
win  at  nights  as  passionately  real.  It  is  no 
part  of  my  intention  to  disinter  that  article 
from  the  cemetery  of  forgotten  fancies, 
though  I  think  it  was  truer  than  most  jour- 
nalism. For  I  realize  that  since  then  we  have 
all  lived  through  a  short  period  of  wakeful  life 
and  possibly  many  centuries  of  dreams,  and 
are  therefore,  or  so  our  quenchless  optimism 
would  assure  us,  so  much  the  wiser.  Our 
feet  have  trodden  the  pavements  of  starry 
palaces  then  unbuilt,  and  the  walls  of  strange, 

107 


108  MONOLOGUES 

night-hung  cities  have  echoed  to  our  new- 
made  songs.  In  the  year  nineteen  hundred 
and  eight  we  were  children  ;  in  the  year 
nineteen  hundred  and  ten  we  shall  be  old 
men  ;  to-day,  we  dream. 

Poets,  who  are  the  most  interesting  of  the 
moving  objects  that  inhabit  the  daylight 
world,  win  their  curious  supremacy  in  that 
world,  a  supremacy  always  disputed  and 
always  beyond  dispute,  by  means  of  their 
imperial  possessions  in  the  world  of  sleep, 
and  it  is  their  recollection  of  their  kingdoms 
under  the  moon  that  enables  them  to  give 
colour  and  beauty  of  form  to  the  grey  world 
that  holds  our  disillusioned  lives.  But, 
though  we  cannot  hope  to  share,  save  at 
secondhand,  their  intense  recollection  of  the 
beautiful  life  of  sleep,  we  are  all  able  to 
remember  it  to  a  certain  extent ;  and  we 
use  this  partial  recollection,  wisely  enough 
perhaps,  not  to  make  us  discontented  with 
our  wakeful  life,  but  to  credit  that  life  with 
qualities  which  it  does  not  possess.  I  doubt 
very  much  whether  many  people  realize  how 
far  their  normal  lives  are  affected  by  their 
dreams  ;  yet  it  is  in  dreams  that  all  desires 
are  born. 


ON   DREAMS  109 

The  popular  phrase  "  as  empty  as  a 
dream  "  is  a  very  good  example  of  the  fairly 
general  maxim,  that  to  be  successful  a  phrase 
must  convey  a  definite  untruth.  Dreams  are 
not  empty  ;  indeed,  I  can  conceive  no  human 
experience  that  less  deserves  that  contemp- 
tuous adjective,  for  sometimes  in  a  night  of 
dreaming  we  live  a  hundred  lives.  Neverthe- 
less, the  popular  contempt  for  the  dreamer, 
the  man  who  allows  his  love  for  the  beauties 
of  the  sleep-world  to  dull  his  realization  of 
the  ugly  facts  that  constitute  life,  is  founded 
on  something  more  than  a  misleading  phrase. 
Deep  down  in  the  heart  of  every  man  you 
will  find  the  instinctive  conviction  that  life, 
despite  the  generous  praises  of  the  dying,  is 
a  monotonous  task  that  it  is  very  noble  of 
us  to  perform.  From  this  it  is  but  a  step 
to  the  assumption  that  enjoyment  is  some- 
how immoral,  a  belief  silently  held  by  nearly 
every  one,  and  not  least  by  the  pleasure - 
seekers  themselves,  and  that  happy  people 
are  evading  their  duties.  It  is  this  intense 
belief  in  the  divinity  of  our  secret  discon- 
tents that  is  called  joi  de  vivre. 

Now,  looking  round  the  world,  I  can  find 


110  MONOLOGUES 

no  man  more  happy,  and,  therefore,  I  sup- 
pose no  man  more  wicked,  than  your  suc- 
cessful dreamer.  He  is  the  eloquent  excep- 
tion to  the  rule  that  in  the  gratification  of 
desire  lies  misery,  for  his  desires  have  only 
to  be  conceived  to  be  gratified,  and  for  him 
achievement  brings  no  sorrow.  There  is  so 
great  a  variety  of  life  in  the  world  of 
dreams  that  satiety  is  impossible  ;  your  prac- 
tised dreamer  rather  finds  it  difficult  to 
linger  in  enjoyment  of  his  perfected  con- 
ceptions, so  wide  a  world  lies  ready  for  his 
adventurous  feet.  Nor  does  the  reproachful 
attitude  of  patiently  suffering  humanity  en- 
courage him  to  leave  his  dreaming  and  take 
up  his  duty  of  life.  No  rich  man,  stricken 
bankrupt,  is  as  poor  as  a  dream-magnate 
in  his  rare  moments  of  life-consciousness. 
In  place  of  his  palaces  he  finds  villas  of 
mud  ;  in  place  of  his  laughing  kingdom  he 
finds  a  disillusioned  world  ;  in  place  of  his 
generous  courtiers  he  finds  a  people  patently 
mistrustful  of  him,  and,  even  harder  to  bear, 
secretly  mistrustful  of  themselves.  It  is  not 
to  be  wondered  that  the  habit  grows  with 
age,  so  that  the  boy  who  can  lay  aside  his 


ON   DREAMS  111 

dreams  with  his  marbles  becomes  the  man 
who  can  hardly  recognize  the  fading  shapes 
of  the  concrete  world. 

And  when  we  have  finished  laughing  at 
a  man  because  he  will  not  leave  his  gardens 
of  far  and  dreamy  roses  to  brush  his  hair, 
perhaps  we  may  admit  that  there  is  a  note 
of  envy  in  our  mocking  criticism  of  his  un- 
kempt head.  There  is,  to  snatch  the  obvious 
pun,  a  sorrow  not  wholly  sweet  in  our  part- 
ings. Without  in  the  least  wishing  to  insult 
or  even  ignore  convention,  we  know  that  we 
lack  the  power.  If,  by  some  strange  mis- 
chance, our  locks  were  shaggy  and  un- 
trimmed,  two  bars  of  a  familiar  tune  whistled 
on  the  lips  of  a  street-boy  would  suffice  to 
send  us  cringing  to  the  barber.  Every 
normal  individual  believes  that  he  can  only 
hide  the  weakness  of  his  coward  soul  by 
imitating  his  neighbour  in  inessentials  ;  and 
the  result  of  this  mutual  mimicking  is  a 
mournful  uniformity  in  the  hideousness  of 
our  appearance.  When  we  laugh  at  a  man 
for  looking  at  a  golliwog,  we  are  trying  to 
defend  our  own  neglect  of  beauty.  We  do 
not  look  like  golliwogs,  but  we  do  look  like 


112  MONOLOGUES 

each  other,  and  reason  should  tell  us  that 
that  is  worse. 

Of  course,  it  may  be  said  that  a  dreamer 
does  not  ignore  convention  because  he  dis- 
approves of  it,  but  because  he  is  not  con- 
scious of  it ;  and  this  is  true.  But  whether 
you  prefer  to  call  his  rapt  absence  of  mind 
weakness  or  strength,  it  must  be  acknow- 
ledged that  it  helps  him  to  overcome  a 
number  of  difficulties,  the  mere  possibility  of 
which  is  enough  to  keep  us  timorously  miser- 
able. Poverty,  which  might  be  called  the 
daymare  of  humanity,  only  sends  him  more 
passionately  to  his  dreaming,  and  it  is  thus 
with  all  the  misfortunes  of  which  the  image 
holds  us  wretchedly  wakeful.  We  would  all 
like  to  conquer  our  fears,  and  the  dreamer 
succeeds  with  a  flicker  of  the  eyelids  and  an 
inward  glance  at  his  heaped  treasury.  If 
dreaming  be  a  weakness,  as  those  aver  who 
have  consciences  like  alarm-clocks,  it  seems 
better  able  to  conquer  the  facts  of  existence 
than  our  strength. 

Yet,  if  we  are  not  dreamers,  we  have  our 
dreams  ;  if  we  have  not  the  ropes  of  stars, 
and  purses  of  silver  moons  and  golden  suns 


ON  DREAMS  113 

of  the  poets,  we  have  not  wholly  valueless 
bric-a-brac  of  our  own.  Clear-cut  moments 
of  sleep  like  fragments  of  mediaeval  carving ; 
faces  twisted  with  streaky  clay  by  Japanese 
fingers  ;  wet  pebbles  that  have  caught  the 
sun  on  a  rainy  day  ;  pine-trees  and  smooth 
hills  and  burning  fields  of  gorse ;  tinted 
tatters  from  the  rag-bag  of  our  conscious- 
ness :  these  things  add  a  touch  of  enchant- 
ment to  our  most  sober  nights  of  sleep,  and 
sometimes  set  us  astride  behind  the  witches 
to  see  a  mad  world  from  the  back  of  a 
broomstick  and  flout  the  law  of  gravity. 
After  a  night  spent  like  this  it  is  a  little 
absurd  to  damn  Lord  Northcliffe,  Fate,  and 
the  Government  because  the  train  is  two 
minutes  late,  or  an  egg  is  over-cooked.  Yet 
the  man  who  can  build  castles  of  moonbeams 
and  twist  ropes  from  sand  in  pyjamas,  be- 
comes a  foolish  and  petulant  child  when  he 
puts  on  the  uniform  of  his  kind.  It  is 
possible  that  his  folly  represents  an  honest 
effort  to  express  his  share  of  our  common 
humanity,  but  it  is  folly  nevertheless.  I 
never  meet  a  nice,  clean  City  gentleman 
without  wishing  that  he  had  brought  his 

8 


114  MONOLOGUES 

broomstick  with  him.  Without  it  he  is 
merely  a  careful  example  of  a  colourless  and 
uninteresting  type.  It  is,  I  believe,  bad  form 
in  the  City  to  be  individual ;  but  it  is  bad 
art  to  be  an  unimaginative  reproduction  of 
the  conventional  conception  of  civilized  man. 
My  mind  prefers  even  the  golliwogs  and 
teddy-bears  of  humanity  to  these  soulless 
picture -postcards.  No  doubt  it  is  pleasant 
to  criticise  the  Daily  Mail  and  the  Govern- 
ment, but  to  damn  one's  neighbour  and  culti- 
vate one's  individuality  is  a  more  hopeful 
task.  But  most  people  only  do  this  in 
dreams,  and  as  they  die  every  morning  when 
they  wake  up,  we  never  see  anything  but 
their  corpses. 

My  moral  is  that  most  of  us  live  only 
in  dreams,  because  when  we  are  awake  we 
are  not  brave  enough  to  face  the  task  of 
living  with  our  unaided  individualities.  If 
we  all  part  our  hair  in  the  middle,  and  wear 
the  same  silly  clothes,  and  feign  interest  in 
the  same  silly  things,  perhaps  the  devil  will 
not  know  us  apart ;  that,  I  suppose,  would 
be  the  mediseval  interpretation  of  our  motive. 
Substituting  our  own  consciences  for  the 


ON  DREAMS  115 

devil,  it  stands  pretty  well  to-day.  But  the 
dreamer,  the  man  our  every  institution  seems 
designed  to  punish,  he  also  lives  only  in 
dreams,  and  only  differs  from  us  in  that 
he  lives  twenty-four  hours  for  our  eight  or 
ten.  If,  in  place  of  his  daylight  dreaming, 
we  achieved  a  splendidly  passionate  manner 
of  life,  our  reproaches  might  be  justified. 
But  we  should  not  blame  him  if  he  finds 
our  petty  puppet-show  undignified,  and  our 
timorous  art  of  mutual  mimickry  unworthy 
of  his  attention. 


XIV, 
NEW   YEAR'S   EVE 

WHEN  that  I  was  and  a  little  tiny  boy — I 
admit  that  I  have  stolen  this  way  of  begin- 
ning an  article  from  Mr.  Quiller  Couch- 
there  was  always  something  very  precious 
to  me  in  the  simple  ceremony  of  letting  in 
the  New  Year  and  letting  out  the  Old. 
Doubtless,  the  unwonted  thrill  of  sitting  up 
late,  and  sipping  hot  lemonade,  which  we 
children  called  punch,  had  something  to  do 
with  the  deep -breathed  solemnity  with  which 
the  occasion  inspired  me.  But  even  now, 
when  I  am  tired  of  sitting  up  late,  and  even 
more  tired  of  punch,  and,  above  all,  when 
I  have  realized  that  the  years  grow  worse 
instead  of  better,  even  now  I  cannot  hear 
the  clock  strike  twelve  at  midnight  of  the 
thirty-first  of  December  without  a  quicken- 
ing of  the  pulse,  for  which  my  reason  can 

116 


NEW  YEAR'S  EVE  117 

supply  no  satisfactory  explanation.  I  repeat 
that  I  have  got  beyond  the  folly  of  expecting 
the  New  Year  to  be  any  better  than  the  Old. 
Indeed,  the  present  year  has  given  me  every 
satisfaction,  and  I  should  probably  be  wiser 
to  spend  the  rest  of  my  days  in  the  year 
1909,  than  to  fare  further  into  the  unknown. 
But  we  poor  two-footed  beasts  have  such 
an  itch  for  travelling  that  I  do  not  doubt 
that  I  will  let  in  the  New  Year  at  the  earliest 
possible  moment,  and  kick  my  good  friend 
1909  ungratefully  from  my  door.  The  New 
Year  may  prove  the  scurviest  of  fellows,  yet, 
mad  optimists  as  we  are,  we  will  all  be  there 
waiting  for  him  before  he  is  due  to  arrive. 
He  will  help  to  rob  us  of  our  brains,  our 
teeth,  and  our  hair.  He  will  continue  that 
process  of  decay  that  brings  us  at  last  to 
our  tardy  graves.  He  will  put  some  of  us 
in  love  and  some  of  us  in  prison,  but  his 
first  amusement  will  be  most  mischievous  of 
all ;  for  he  will  hardly  be  five  minutes  old 
before  he  sets  us  cheating  ourselves  into  the 
belief  that  we  are  about  to  become  very  fine 
fellows.  Every  one  goes  to  bed  on  New 
Year's  Eve  with  his  hands  smeared  with  tar 


118  MONOLOGUES 

from  his  paving  operations  on  the  road  to 
hell.  It  is  so  easy  to  make  good  resolutions 
while  the  bells  are  chiming  their  welcome 
all  over  the  midnight  sky ;  but  it  is  still 
easier  to  feel  foolish  in  the  morning. 

It  may  be  questioned  whether  there  is  not 
an  element  of  danger  in  this  violent  form- 
ing of  impossible  resolutions.  A  debauch  of 
virtuous  feeling  overnight  is  apt  to  induce 
a  kind  of  moral  "  hot-coppers "  in  the 
morning,  and  the  sudden  realization  of  the 
hopeless  nature  of  their  good  resolutions  may 
lead  people  to  accept  their  own  failings  a 
little  too  readily.  There  is  a  good  deal  of 
difference  between  the  position  of  the  man 
who  says  :  "  I  am  wicked  !  "  and  that  of 
the  man  who  says :  "  I  wish  I  were  not 
wicked  !  "  In  truth,  it  is  just  as  well  not 
to  have  too  clear  a  sense  of  how  far  we 
fall  short  of  our  own  standards  of  morality, 
or  we  may  start  degrading  our  standards 
to  fit  our  own  case.  When  a  man  has 
solemnly  formed  a  resolution  and  failed  to 
keep  it,  he  has  done  an  injury  to  his  will. 
It  is  better  to  improve  than  to  form  good 
resolutions. 


NEW  YEAR'S  EVE  119 

These  are  truisms  ;  but  the  truism  is  a 
wild  fowl  very  seasonable  at  this  time  of 
the  year.  It  is  generally  admitted  that  the 
resolutions  made  on  New  Year's  Eve  are 
difficult  or  impossible  to  keep,  and  we  have 
seen  that  this  failure  is  bad  for  character. 
"What  then?"  I  can  conceive  the  conscien- 
tious reader  asking,  "  what,  then,  am  I  to 
do  next  Friday  when  the  bells  are  tolling 
out  the  Old  Year,  and  I  am  feeling  solemn 
and  uplifted?"  Really,  the  question  is  a 
little  difficult  to  answer.  It  might  not  be 
a  bad  plan  to  make  a  few  good  resolu- 
tions on  behalf  of  other  people ;  to 
resolve,  for  instance,  that  Mr.  Bernard 
Shaw  should  write  no  more  to  the  Times; 
that  Miss  Corelli,  of  Stratford,  should  hold 
her  peace  about  matters  that  do  not  concern 
her  work  ;  that  the  Laureate  should  rhyme 
no  more  ;  that  the  Mr.  Rudyard  Kipling  of 
the  Jungle  Books  should  return  to  us  ;  that 
writers  in  general  should  believe  in  their  own 
art,  and  that  the  whole  school  of  moral 
critics  should  rush  down  a  steep  place  into 
the  sea.  Personally,  I  should  wake  up  when 
I  came  to  that  last  resolution.  It  would 


120  MONOLOGUES 

strain  even  the  optimism  born  of  New  Year's 
Eve  to  believe  in  the  possibility  of  anything 
so  desirable  as  that. 

Seriously,  there  is  something  in  the  wind 
on  New  Year's  Eve  that  affects  most  of  us 
strangely.  At  no  other  time  are  we  so  much 
disposed  to  regard  life  as  rather  more  than 
a  series  of  haphazard  moments.  The  years 
take  ordered  shape  behind  us,  and  while  we 
regard  them  dispassionately  we  have  the 
sense  of  other  years  no  less  ordered  that 
wait  our  coming.  The  arbitrary  division  of 
our  calendar  assumes  an  almost  spiritual  sig- 
nificance. We  can  feel  ourselves  changing 
as  the  moments  fall  gently  through  the  hands 
of  Destiny,  and  we  return  to  our  homes 
after  the  stroke  of  twelve  not  one  year  but 
many  years  older.  It  is  as  though,  in  that 
moment  of  intense  consciousness,  we  are 
permitted  to  catch  a  glimpse  of  the  world 
that  lies  outside  us.  Our  senses  are  abnor- 
mally keen  ;  we  can  feel  the  breath  of  the 
bumping  hours  ;  we  can  hear  the  pulse  of 
the  world's  heart.  Almost  it  seems  that  our 
minds  can  detect  the  purpose  of  our  strange, 
bewildered  lives,  dim,  uncertain,  incompre- 


NEW  YEAR'S  EYE  121 

hensible,  but  yet  endowing  them  with  a  new 
dignity,  a  new  resolve. 

After,  we  creep  back  to  our  hearths  a  little 
cold,  with  rebellious  voices,  our  hearts  strug- 
gling vainly  against  disillusionment.  Irri- 
tating trifles  swarm  into  our  minds,  and  blot 
out  our  sense  of  the  infinite. 

It  is  time  the  children  were  in  bed. 
Christine  has  obviously  caught  a  cold.  We 
must  remember  to  put  1910  at  the  head  of 
our  letters.  The  dream  is  over. 

So  far  I  have  been  content  to  consider 
the  case  of  those  who  observe  the  coming 
of  the  New  Year  with  proper  ritual,  but 
there  arc  others.  For  my  part  I  think  that 
the  man  who  lightly  misses  an  opportunity 
of  resting  for  an  instant  from  the  whirl  and 
babble  of  our  breathless  lives  is  much  to  be 
pitied,  and,  therefore,  I  patronize  with  my 
sympathy  all  those  lost  creatures  who  snore 
the  New  Year  in  in  bed,  and  shout  it  in  in 
restaurants.  I  have  welcomed  it  in  many 
places,  but,  like  Christmas,  it  comes  perhaps 
with  the  best  grace  in  the  country.  Never- 
theless, one  of  the  most  impressive  New 
Year's  Eves  I  remember  was  spent  on  the 


122  MONOLOGUES 

balcony  of  a  London  flat,  when  the  year 
came  swaggering  in  with  such  a  jangling  of 
bells  that  the  fine  lady  of  Banbury  Cross 
was  nothing  to  him.  After  all,  the  spirit 
is  always  more  important  than  the  environ- 
ment ;  the  great  thing  is  to  stop  for  a 
moment  and  look  one's  life  in  the  face  ;  nor, 
after  all,  is  it  such  a  bad  thing  to  regard 
the  future  hopefully.  It  will  not  do  the 
future  any  good,  but  nothing  can  deprive 
us  of  the  thrill  proper  to  the  optimist.  Let 
us,  by  all  means,  "  greet  the  unseen  with 
a  cheer." 

And  a  word  in  passing  for  the  year  that 
is  gone,  to  come  again  no  more.  What  days 
it  has  given  us,  what  golden,  magic  days  ! 
It  is  true  that  only  a  minute  fraction  of  it 
remains  with  us,  but  that  fraction  is  the  best 
of  all.  The  pride  of  sunny  fields ;  the 
gleam  of  a  girl's  face  wet  with  autumn  rain  ; 
the  lonely  star  we  found  in  a  hollow  of  the 
Sussex  hills  ;  the  fragment  of  song  that  came 
to  us  on  Exmoor,  how  good  these  things 
were,  how  good  they  are  even  now  !  I  can 
sit  in  my  chair  on  the  brink  of  1910,  and 
think  of  a  hundred  moments  in  1909  to  set 


NEW  YEAR'S  EVE  123 

my  heart  beating  with  excitement  and  make 
my  body  radiant  with  joy  of  life.  And  so 
can  every  one  of  my  readers,  if  they  have  a 
mind  to.  Believe  if  you  wish  that  the  pains 
of  life  outnumber  the  pleasures,  but  bear 
in  mind  that  it  is  your  own  fault  if  you  keep 
the  evil  and  forget  the  good.  If  I  could 
thread  the  stars  like  beads,  I  should  make 
a  necklace  of  them  for  my  good  fairy,  1909, 
and  I  should  give  him  the  sun  and  moon 
for  playthings.  Welcome  the  New  Year  as 
you  will,  but  do  not  neglect  to  drop  a  tear 
of  gratitude  for  the  Old.  What  golden,  magic 
days  !  What  enchanted  nights  of  stars  !  It 
really  is  a  little  hard  to  believe  that  the  New 
Year  will  bring  us  anything  as  good. 


XV 

WHY    WOMEN    FAIL    IN    ART 

IN  these  exciting  days,  when  women  are  no 
longer  the  frail,  timorous  creatures  beloved 
— and  shall  we  whisper  patronized?— by  our 
robust  ancestors,  it  may  be  unwise  to  con- 
sider such  a  problem  as  is  conveyed  in  the 
title  of  my  article  without  giving  at  the  start 
a  definite  assurance  as  to  my  appreciation 
of  the  thousand  qualities  of  the  charming 
sex.  Personally,  I  confess  that  the  spirited 
movement  of  the  Suffragettes  leaves  me  a 
little  cold,  not  because  I  think  that  women 
ought  not  to  have  votes,  but  because  I  can- 
not conceive  that  any  sane  person  can  want 
a  vote  or  find  it  of  any  use  if  he  has  it. 
After  all,  the  methods  employed  by  the  mili- 
tant Suffragettes  are  their  own  affair.  For 
my  part,  I  am  afraid  of  hat-pins,  but  I  have 
found  the  bright  eyes  of  girls  more  deadly  ; 

124 


WHY  WOMEN  FAIL  IN  ART        125 

I  mistrust  dog-whips,  but  the  domestic  elo- 
quence of  women  fills  me  with  a  greater 
dismay  ;  the  anger  of  women  is  terrifying, 
but  their  tears  consume  me  utterly.  I  should 
believe  in  votes  for  women,  or  even  in 
Votes  for  Women,  if  I  believed  in  votes  at 
all. 

And  now  I  hope  after  this  preliminary 
explanation  there  is  no  risk  of  my  being 
waylayed  by  militant  vote-seekers  with  a 
taste  for  letters.  The  argument  that  because 
women  have  not  shone  in  the  world  of  art 
they  do  not  deserve  a  vote  is  foolish,  because 
there  is  nothing  in  the  life  of  the  artist  to 
fit  him  specially  for  the  task  of  interfering 
in  the  misgovernment  of  his  country.  In- 
deed, I  suppose  brains  are  part  of  the  artist's 
birthright,  and  they  are  a  serious  drawback 
in  a  politician,  as  Mr.  Balfour's  admirers 
have  found.  So,  dear  ladies,  the  very  extent 
of  your  failure  in  art  may  be  the  measure 
of  your  capacity  as  politicians  !  Is  not  that 
a  pretty  speech? 

There  is  one  other  kind  of  critic  with 
whom  I  should  like  to  deal  before  I  take  up 
my  argument,  and  that  is  the  impulsive 


126  MONOLOGUES 

person  who  will  read  the  title  of  my  article, 
and  promptly  send  me  a  queer  list  of  names, 
ranging  from  Sapho  to  Gyp,  from  Christina 
Rossetti  to  Mrs.  Hemans,  from  Vigee  le  Brun 
to  Kate  Greenaway.  Now,  it  is  true  that 
until  comparatively  recent  times  it  may  have 
been  difficult  for  women  to  achieve  distinc- 
tion as  painters  for  lack  of  opportunity  and 
training,  but  there  has  been  nothing  to  pre- 
vent them  from  displaying  their  merit  as 
writers  if  they  had  it.  They  have  had  free 
access  to  pen  and  ink  and  paper,  and  on 
the  whole  they  have  had  a  great  deal  more 
leisure  than  men  in  which  to  cultivate  the 
most  agreeable  of  arts.  Yet,  although  at  all 
times  critics  have  erred  in  generosity  in  esti- 
mating the  value  of  the  work  of  women 
writers,  it  would  be  easier  to  prepare  a  list 
of  a  thousand  men  than  to  give  one  of  fifty 
women  who  could  be  said  to  have  produced 
work  of  definite  artistic  value. 

Why  is  this?  Why  is  it  that  women  who 
can  do  what  they  like  in  the  normal  world 
of  life  should  accomplish  so  little  in  the 
world  of  art?  I  suppose  that  once  upon  a 
time  it  would  have  been  sufficient  to  mention 


WHY  WOMEN  FAIL  IN   ART        127 

their  family  duties,  and  pass  on  serenely 
satisfied  with  the  explanation ;  but  the 
present-day  opinion  of  women  demands  sub- 
tler reasons.  I  would  suggest  two.  In  the 
first  place  the  motive  force  that  drives  all 
artists  is  the  desire  for  self-expression,  and 
I  doubt  whether  in  this  sense  of  the  word 
women  have  any  self  to  express.  Secondly, 
women  regard  life  itself  as  a  conscious  art, 
and  the  pertinacity  and  intensity  with  which 
they  develop  this  idea  leaves  them  little 
energy  for  creative  work.  They  might 
almost  be  said  to  exhaust  their  creative 
energies  in  seeking  to  invent  themselves. 

It  will  be  seen  that  my  two  reasons  over- 
lap, so  it  will  be  convenient  to  consider  them 
together.  And  here  I  must  say  a  word  about 
the  classic  perils  of  generalizing  on  women. 
It  is  always  dangerous  to  generalize  about 
anything,  but  I  think  it  may  fairly  be  said 
that  it  is  easier  to  treat  of  women  in  the 
aggregate  than  to  form  any  general  concep- 
tion of  the  character  of  men.  Women  are 
far  more  womanly  than  men  are  manly,  and 
this  is  the  heart  of  my  first  reason.  Women 
always  strike  me  as  being  rather  representa- 


128  MONOLOGUES 

tive  fragments  of  their  sex  than  independent 
human  beings  in  a  state  of  individual  exist- 
ence. In  this  connection  it  is  interesting  to 
contrast  children  of  either  sex.  Boys  have 
certain  strongly-marked  characteristics  of 
their  own,  but  they  do  not  bear  more  re- 
semblance to  men  than  puppies  do  to  adult 
dogs.  Girls,  on  the  other  hand,  so  far  as 
they  have  any  character  at  all,  are  women 
in  miniature,  and  as  like  their  elder  sisters 
as  kittens  are  to  cats.  I  have  seen  a  girl- 
baby,  six  months  old,  practising  the  art  of 
producing  smiles  of  calculated  sweetness  in 
her  cradle,  while  her  brother,  two  years 
older,  was  still  content  with  the  rapt,  un- 
conscious grins  of  innocent  childhood.  It 
is  curious  that  while  the  word  "  boy  "  still 
stands  for  pleasant  youthfulness,  we  have  to 
qualify  the  word  "  girl "  with  the  epithet 
"  little  "  to  grant  it  a  similar  grace. 

It  may,  perhaps,  seem  a  hard  saying  that 
women  do  not  exist  at  all,  but  at  least 
I  may  venture  that  only  in  very  exceptional 
cases  can  they  claim  an  individual  character. 
I  do  not  know  who  first  traced  the  resem- 
blance between  a  woman  and  a  mirror,  but 


WHY  WOMEN  FAIL  IN  ART        129 

whoever  it  may  have  been  he  had  won  more 
than  an  idle  fancy  from  his  reflections.    Men 
are  born  with  the  germs  of  character  which 
they    develop    in    passing    from    youth    to 
maturity.      Women    are   born    with    violent 
instincts,  but  with  no  character  that  they  can 
call  their  own,  and  they  spend  their  lifetime  in 
endeavouring  to  acquire  one.    Wherever  they 
admire,  they  steal.    "  Women,"   said  Wilde, 
"  are  sphinxes  without  secrets."     But  he  did 
not  give  them  sufficient  credit  for  their  skill 
in  the  construction  of  sphinxes.    We  simple- 
minded  men  may  well  lament  over  the  sub- 
tlety  of  woman,   when   in   all   her   wakeful 
life  she  has  laboured  day  by  day  and  year 
by  year  on  that  delightful  work  of  art,  her- 
self.    Her  smiles,  her  tears,  her  moments  of 
forgetfulness,  all  have  their  significance  and 
represent  hours  of  patient  toil.     Her  failures 
are  pitiful  ;    but   her   triumphs   are  beyond 
those  of  any  ordinary  artist.     In  her  highest 
forms   her  air  of  the  unconsciousness  that 
conceals  art  is  perfect.     She  affects  the  sim- 
plicity of  a  child,  the  courage  of  a  man,  the 
fervour   of   a   prophet,    and  the   wisdom   of 
Solomon,  and  over  all  she  flings  the  cloak 

9 


130  MONOLOGUES 

of  mystery  that  envelops  the  lives  of  those 
who  hold  high  dreams.  Free  herself  from 
the  doubts  that  shadow  the  intellectual,  she 
secretly  despises  men  because  they  are  not 
clever  enough  to  give  the  credit  of  her  work 
to  her,  and  not  to  Nature.  Sometimes,  in- 
deed, she  feels  the  longing  of  the  artist  for 
recognition,  and  lifts  the  curtain,  though  it 
be  but  a  little,  to  the  man  she  loves,  only  to 
let  it  fall  aghast,  when  she  realizes  that  it  is 
her  handiwork  that  men  love,  and  not  her- 
self. Perhaps  in  her  wakeful  nights  she 
wearies  of  her  life-long  task,  and  mourns 
for  the  simplicity  that  is  not  hers.  But  dawn 
finds  her  smiling,  alert,  certain  of  herself, 
ready  to  add  a  new  touch  of  colour,  a  new 
phrase,  to  the  work  that  she  follows  daunt- 
lessly  to  the  very  gates  of  death. 

Looking  at  the  pages  of  literary  history, 
I  am,  on  the  whole,  surprised  that  women 
have  accomplished  as  much  in  pure  art  as 
they  have,  for  at  best  a  woman's  work  is 
never  more  than  a  secondary  occupation  in 
her  life,  and  we  have  seen  that  her  labour 
in  her  sweet  task  of  self-creation  must  be 
terribly  exhausting.  No  writer  or  painter 


WHY  WOMEN   FAIL  IN  ART        131 

devotes  a  tenth  part  of  the  time  to  his  work 
that  a  woman  spends  in  carrying  on  the 
charmed  traditions  of  her  sex.  And  even  if 
we  endow  a  woman  with  extraordinary 
powers  of  expression  we  must  remember  that 
she  will  have  little  save  echoes  to  express. 
She  has  formed  an  enchanted  human  shape 
from  impressions  of  a  thousand  models,  but 
beyond  these  skilful  derivations  she  has 
nothing  but  the  normal  instincts  of  her  sex, 
which  Nature  is  over-eager  to  express  for 
her.  If  the  natural  woman  survive  behind 
the  mask  she  will  express  herself  in  children  ; 
these  are  her  sonnets  and  her  love  stories, 
her  nocturnes  and  her  autobiograplry.  If  the 
natural  woman  has  perished  beneath  the 
paint,  and  I  suspect  that  the  death-rate 
amongst  natural  women  is  rapidly  increas- 
ing, she  will  fling  herself  the  more  passion- 
ately into  her  task  of  creating  the  vision 
that  decks  the  lives  of  men  with  the  glory 
they  call  love. 

Why  should  women  write  books  when  they 
can  bear  children?  Why  should  women 
paint  pictures  when  they  can  make  them- 
selves? Their  work  has  inspired  all  that 


132  MONOLOGUES 

is  best  in  the  art  of  man  ;  our  lyric  poems 
are  but  timid  reproductions  of  their  concep- 
tions ;  they  make  by  day  the  dreams  that 
we  win  by  the  light  of  the  stars.  It  is  pos- 
sible that  some  of  them  reading  this  page 
will  hardly  feel  flattered  by  this  perfectly 
sincere  appreciation  of  their  skill  in  creat- 
ing their  own  charm.  I  do  not  know 
why  they  should  be  displeased.  I  would 
point  out,  however,  that  my  article  negates 
its  title,  for  I  have  endeavoured  to  suggest 
that  women  are  the  greatest  and  most  suc- 
cessful artists  of  all.  It  is  only  by  the  light 
of  woman,  this  supreme  invention  of  women, 
that  men  come  to  a  sense  of  their  own  im- 
perfections. We  worship  them  from  afar 
even  when  they  lie  on  our  hearts,  and  it 
is  for  love  of  women  as  women  have  made 
them  that  men  succeed  in  art. 


XVI 
AN   ELECTION-TIDE   DREAM 

As  a  lax  student  of  many  newspapers  it 
seems  to  me  that  a  great  deal  too  much 
has  been  written  about  General  Elections, 
and  that  this  is  the  moment  when  the 
truly  great  talk  about  something  else.  I 
do  not  say  that  the  journalists  are  wrong. 
English  people  seem  to  be  very  fond  of 
elections.  They  would  not  celebrate  the 
apotheosis  of  poor  old  Guy  Fawkes  year 
after  year  if  they  were  not,  but  I  doubt 
whether  they  are  quite  so  fond  of  them  as 
the  future  student  of  our  contemporary  Press 
may  imagine.  The  men  who  can  cheer 
lustily  when  they  see  for  the  thousandth  time 
the  features  of  Mr.  Chamberlain  or  Mr. 
Lloyd  George  flung  on  a  screen  are  few  and 
far  between.  We  others,  whose  political 
enthusiasms  are  less  god-like,  may  well 


133 


134  MONOLOGUES 

plead  election  headache  after  several  days  of 
strident  democracy  and  aristocratic  hubbub. 

And,  fortunately  for  the  average  patriot 
whose  lungs  and  ears  and  degree  of  patience 
are  only  normal,  there  are  more  leisurely 
joys  than  those  of  a  General  Election ; 
there  are  quieter  kingdoms  than  the  fierce 
world  of  party  politics.  It  is  possible  to 
steal  away  from  the  argument,  about  it  and 
about,  to  some  pleasant  field  of  dreams  where 
it  is  no  crime  to  lie  and  take  one's  rest, 
and  where  the  heart  may  whisper  without 
treason,  Does  it  matter'? 

I  remember  reading  a  long  time  ago — was 
it  not  in  the  fragrant  pages  of  the  "  Yellow 
Book"? — a  delightful  article  by  Mr.  Max 
Beerbohm  on  the  seaside  in  winter.  I  can- 
not recall  a  word  of  it — hardly  an  idea — but 
an  hour  back  the  cold  wind  blowing  in  from 
the  sea  restored  to  me  the  whole  atmosphere 
of  it ;  and,  after  all,  in  essays  it  is  the  atmo- 
sphere that  counts.  The  receding  tide  hushed 
softly  to  me  in  the  winter  twilight ;  the 
ribbed  sand  greeted  my  grateful  feet  through 
the  soles  of  my  town-going  boots  ;  behind 
me  the  cliffs  climbed  vaguely  to  heaven, 


AN  ELECTION-TIDE  DREAM         135 

showing  here  and  there  a  glimmering  light 
to  remind  me  that  I  dwell  in  a  civilized 
world.  It  was  a  solemn  moment — one  of 
those  moments  in  which  the  individual  feels 
at  once  modest  and  important — modest  in 
his  share  of  life,  and  important  in  his  rela- 
tionship to  it.  And  in  that  solemn  moment 
there  came  to  me  two  impressions.  One,  as 
I  have  said,  was  that  of  having  read  an  essay 
by  Mr.  Beerbohm  a  long  time  ago  ;  the  other 
touched  the  ridiculous.  When  sea-water 
dries  on  brown  boots  it  leaves  a  white 
deposit  of  salt ;  I  was  not  wearing  brown 
boots,  but,  nevertheless,  I  recalled  the  ap- 
pearance of  that  deposit.  For  most  of  our 
days  our  lives  seem  as  meaningless  as  that. 
Had  I  rested  content  with  the  peace  of 
the  dusk  and  my  two  impressions  and  gone 
home,  my  mind,  I  suppose,  would  have  dis- 
missed the  occasion  as  uneventful,  and  this 
article  would  have  remained  unwritten. 
Instead,  I  gave  a  little  shiver  in  criticism  of 
the  thickness  of  my  overcoat,  and  walked 
briskly  along  the  shore  to  a  place  where 
the  rocks  thrust  rugged  heads  through  the 
level  sand — a  place  where  there  were  pools 


136  MONOLOGUES 

and  seaweed  and  a  salty  smell.  There  is 
something  about  seaweed  that  takes  me  by 
the  throat — something,  nevertheless,  that  I 
cannot  express  for  myself  in  words.  Some 
day  I  fancy  a  writer  will  explain  my  emo- 
tion to  me  in  an  epithet  or  in  a  line  and  a 
half  of  verse  ;  but  as  yet  I  have  not  found 
the  revealing  phrase.  It  is  so  cold  and  so 
dead  and  at  the  same  time  so  tenderly  fragile. 
It  lies  on  the  shore  in  haphazard  bunches 
and  tresses,  and  you  have  to  look  at  it  care- 
fully before  you  realize  the  beauty  of  these 
poor  dead  flowers  of  the  sea.  Men  and 
women  trample  them  underfoot  unheeding, 
but  children,  who  can  see  the  beautiful  better 
than  we,  love  them  and  heap  them  high  in 
their  little  pails.  It  may  be  some  forgotten 
fairy  story  that  links  seaweed  in  my  mind 
with  the  hair  of  a  beautiful  woman,  drowned 
while  she  was  still  young,  or  perhaps  Ariel 
gave  me  the  image  in  a  dream.  But  there 
where  the  rocks  were  and  the  seaweed  with 
its  strange,  sad  smell  of  the  sea,  I  saw  a  ghost 
—a  ghost  that  I  thought  I  had  laid  for  ever. 
I  will  not  set  down  her  name  here  ;  not 
out  of  respect  for  the  dead,  for  she  is  not 


AN  ELECTION-TIDE   DREAM         137 

dead,  nor  out  of  sentimental  regard  for  my 
feelings,  for  I  have  learnt  to  forget  her,  but 
because,  if  she  happened  to  read  these  lines, 
she  had  rather  that  I  did  not.  In  any  case, 
I  must  beware  of  the  crime  of  Richard  le 
Gallienne  and  Sentimental  Tommy,  the  crime 
of  making  copy  out  of  emotions  which  we 
ought  to  have  experienced  but  have  not,  for 
my  ghost  was  a  girl  whom  I  once  thought 
to  love  in  the  hot  pride  of  my  youth,  and 
whom  I  meet  no  more.  This  is  not,  I  sup- 
pose, the  place  for  a  philosophical  disserta- 
tion on  the  nature  of  love  in  general,  or  I 
would  make  some  judicious  reflections  on 
this  case  in  particular.  Say  that  I  loved  a 
girl  who  was  willing  to  accept  my  friendship, 
the  modern  equivalent  of  the  "  I'll  be  a  sister 
to  you  "  of  our  shrewd  grandmothers,  say 
that  some  strange  things  happened,  some 
humorous  and  some,  perhaps,  not  unsym- 
pathetic, and  you  will  have  done  justice  to 
the  situation.  Speaking  dispassionately,  I 
should  say  that  the  really  wise  youth  will 
always  accept  a  girl's  friendship  in  return 
for  his  love.  But  are  there  any  really  wise 
young  men? 


138  MONOLOGUES 

It  will  be  seen  that  Fate  had  played  an 
odd  trick  on  me  in  sending  such  a  ghost  to 
to  charm  the  wintry  shore  ;  but  while  my 
pulse  quickened  and  my  heart  beat  louder  I 
was  far  from  blaming  that  austere  lady  for 
her  choice  of  a  messenger.  Yet,  in  spite  of 
my  excitation  of  spirit,  my  senses  took  note 
of  the  curious  phenomena  that  are  the 
natural  order  of  things  in  the  world  of 
apparitions.  The  night  glowed  into  day,  the 
winter  warmed  into  summer,  and  from  the 
vague  shadows  there  sprang  blue  sea  and 
sky,  yellow  sands,  and  green -capped  cliffs 
of  white.  I  say  that  I  noticed  this  change, 
but  it  did  not  astonish  me  a  jot.  Nor  was 
I  surprised  to  find  that  in  her  metamorphosis 
from  flesh  and  blood  to  a  creature  of  dreams 
my  love  had  remained  unaltered.  She  could 
hardly  grow  more  pretty  ;  and  why  should 
any  one  be  less  beautiful  in  a  dream  than 
in  real  life?  My  aesthetic  sense  went  out  to 
do  her  homage. 

I  always  mistrust  a  man  who  can  give  a 
lyrical,  but  accurate,  description  of  the  girl 
he  loves.  True  passion  is  never  eloquent ; 
it  stumbles  vainly  through  the  shadows  of 


AN  ELECTION-TIDE   DREAM         139 

speech  in  search  of  some  illuminating  and 
tremendous  word.  I  can  give  no  logical 
description  of  the  appearance  of  my  ghost. 
She  had  dark  hair  and  a  nice-shaped  face, 
and  there  was  something  about  her  eyes — 
but  I  have  noticed  that  there  nearly  always 
is  something  about  their  eyes.  .  .  .  She  was 
sitting  on  a  rock  in  the  sun,  and  her  feet 
were  bare  and  shining  wet  from  the  sea. 
Observe  how  dreams  improve  on  life  !  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  in  all  the  long  months  of 
my  passion  I  had  never  seen  her  feet,  yet 
now  that  their  silver-pink  shapeliness  was 
revealed  to  me  in  my  vision  I  found  them 
very  well  worth  looking  at.  There  is  some- 
thing charmingly  intimate  about  a  girl's  toes. 
And  as  I  drew  near  her  my  ghost  raised  her 

head,  and  said No,  I  cannot  tell  you. 

In  truth,  the  dialogue  that  seemed  so  gracious 
and  sagely  witty  in  the  light  of  a  dream 
turns  to  the  merest  dust  of  words  at  the 
touch  of  my  wakeful  pen.  As  with  the  sea- 
weed, and  the  face  of  my  ghost,  the  decisive 
word  eludes  me  that  would  enable  me  to 
give  form  to  her  message  ;  and  in  the  vain 
search  for  it  my  fancy  totters  to  its  founda- 


140  MONOLOGUES 

tion,  and  I  know  that  I  have  built  my 
Spanish  castle  on  the  sands  of  doubt. 

No,  I  have  not  been  down  to  the  sea  this 
winter.  I  have  passed  the  long  days  in  a 
city  distraught  between  meaningless  rumours 
and  idiotic  passions.  As  I  write  a  hoarse 
cheering  breaks  from  the  street  and  rattles 
upon  the  window-panes.  The  success  of 
some  creature  of  ignoble  ambitions  has 
pleased  the  vanity  of  the  mob  that  has  helped 
to  raise  him  an  infinitely  small  degree  above 
its  own  level.  All  over  the  country  the  news 
will  fly  of  another  victory  for  an  army  that 
does  not  exist,  in  a  campaign  that  does  not 
matter  ;  and  other  mobs  will  offend  the  air 
of  heaven  with  their  impertinent  breath. 
The  successful  creature  will  strut  for  a  while, 
flattered,  envied,  and  abused  by  those  who 
have  given  him  his  barren  honours,  and  then 
he  will  pass  and  be  no  more.  There  will 
come  other  fools  to  take  his  place. 

What  though  the  dream  leave  a  bitter  taste 
on  the  lips  of  the  awakened  dreamer?  He 
can  fall  to  dreaming  again,  and  forget  the 
sorrow  of  his  shattered  visions  ;  and  sooner 
or  later,  perhaps,  he  will  find  that  all  his 


AN   ELECTION-TIDE   DREAM 

haphazard  wanderings  in  the  sleep-lit  world 
have  had  a  definite  and  assured  aim  ;  that 
all  unconsciously  he  has  been  drawing 
nearer  to  the  goal  of  his  desires.  Are  the 
elections  more  real,  more  permanent,  more 
significant  than  the  dream  you  won  last 
night,  or  the  sea  that  broke  at  the  feet  of 
my  ghost  and  me  an  hour  ago?  Where  the 
heart  is,  there  the  treasure  is  also.  By  all 
means  choose  the  substance  and  abjure  the 
shadow  ;  but  who  shall  say  that  the  dream 
is  not  the  shadow,  the  life  that  surrounds 
us,  the  terrible  shadow  of  our  desolate 
hearts  ? 


XVII 
THE    NEW    SEX 

I  DO  not  wish  to  weary  readers  with  yet 
another  article  on  whether  women  should 
or  should  not  have  votes.  In  itself  the  prob- 
lem is  of  very  small  importance,  as  most 
men  and  women  realize  that  it  is  not  votes, 
but  opinions,  that  govern  a  country.  But 
the  "  cause,"  as  I  believe  the  elect  call  it, 
becomes  significant  when  it  is  considered,  not 
as  an  isolated  battle,  but  as  a  relatively  unim- 
portant skirmish  in  an  enormously  important 
campaign.  This  is  the  campaign  that  began 
with  the  conspiracy  of  Eve  against  Adam, 
and  has  developed  in  course  of  time  into 
what  is  known  as  the  sex -war,  the  eternal 
conflict  between  man  and  woman.  We  are 
told  that  in  its  initial  stage  the  devil  was 
on  the  side  of  women  in  this  campaign,  and 
cynics  of  the  male  sex  would  have  us  believe 

142 


THE  NEW  SEX  143 

that  this  is  still  the  case.  I  would  prefer 
to  think  that,  like  the  immortal  Dr.  Bulti- 
tude,  the  devil  is  prepared  to  score  for 
either  side,  and  that  he  does  not  fail  to  reap 
the  reward  of  this  impartiality.  Both  sides, 
impelled  by  the  purest  motives,  forswear  the 
aid  of  their  dusky  auxiliary,  but  the  devil 
is  not  notably  discouraged  by  their  ingrati- 
tude. In  fact,  nothing  is  more  surprising  to 
the  thoughtful  than  the  way  in  which  the 
devil  continues  to  flourish  in  the  face  of 
universal  reprobation,  and  there  are  not 
wanting  philosophers  to  suggest  that  he  is 
not  only  responsible  for  our  immoralities, 
but  for  all  our  conventional  moralities  as 
well.  Certainly  they  do  him  no  dis-service. 
It  is  not  my  purpose  to  write  about  the 
devil,  otherwise  than  indirectly,  but  the  diffi- 
culty of  writing  about  questions  of  sex  in 
the  English  language  for  English  readers  is 
that  it  is  absolutely  necessary  to  display  a 
wholly  indecent  reticence.  The  only  dis- 
sertation on  sex  that  is  really  tolerated  in 
England  is  the  unrecorded  badinage  of  our 
smoking-rooms,  the  modern  equivalent  of  the 
folk-tales  and  folk-songs  of  our  uncultured 


144  MONOLOGUES 

ancestors  ;  and  the  mind  shrinks  from  the 
task  of  translating  a  serious  consideration 
of  sex -questions  into  azure  anecdotes  and 
libidinous  limericks.  I  had  rather  be  inde- 
cently reticent  than  outspoken  on  those 
terms. 

Before  we  come  to  consider  the  circum- 
stances that  have  brought  about  the  latest 
phase  of  the  revolt  of  a  certain  section  of 
women  against  men,  it  is  necessary  to  recall 
the  nature  of  the  truce  that  had  been  more 
or  less  observed  by  both  sexes  before  the 
recent  upheaval  of  militant  femininity.  The 
truce  took  the  form  of  a  compromise,  and  a 
very  ingenious  and  successful  compromise  at 
that.  Men  were  to  be  nominally,  women 
wholly,  monogamous.  In  exchange  for  the 
privilege  of  possessing  one  woman  wholly, 
a  man  was  expected  to  provide  for  her  and 
their  joint  offspring.  It  was  tacitly  under- 
stood that  men  were  intellectual,  capable, 
courageous,  and  masterful,  and  that  women 
were  simple,  faithful,  and  possessed  of  a 
thousand  charms.  Neither  party  to  the  com- 
pact was  supposed  to  depart  from  these 
natural  qualities.  Men  were  not  to  be  emo- 


THE  NEW  SEX  145 

tional,  and  women  were  not  to  think.  Look- 
ing back  we  can  realize  now  that  as  far 
as  they  went  they  were  golden  days.  Regard- 
ing the  future  we  can  feel  no  such  blissful 
certainty. 

Of  course,  the  compromise  failed  in  indi- 
vidual instances,  but  on  the  whole  it  worked 
very  well,  and  it  is  not  to  these  failures 
that  we  must  trace  the  new  feminist  move- 
ment. It  is  due  probably  to  two  causes ; 
first,  to  the  greater  measure  of  education  that 
is  nowadays  granted  to  women,  and,  second, 
to  the  economic  fact  that  a  large  number  of 
women  can  now  earn  their  own  living  with- 
out loss  of  liberty  or  self-respect.  The  first 
is  the  vaguer,  but  probably  the  more  cogent, 
reason ;  for  while  our  modern  system  of 
education  has  produced  no  noticeable  change 
either  for  the  better  or  the  worse  in  our 
young  men,  it  has  certainly  had  a  remark- 
able effect  on  our  young  women.  They  have 
taken,  with  the  beginner's  eagerness,  to  the 
engrossing  pastime  of  thinking,  and,  in  con- 
sequence, they  show  an  increasing  desire  to 
break  the  great  truce  between  the  sexes. 

And  the  second  reason  that  I  gave  above 
10 


146  MONOLOGUES 

supplies  them  with  the  opportunity.  There 
has  always  been  a  considerable  number  of 
women  who  did  not  desire  marriage  in  it- 
self, but  who,  nevertheless,  were  forced  to 
marry  in  order  to  obtain  a  home  and  some- 
one to  support  them.  Nowadays  these 
women  can  obtain  a  situation  as  clerk  or 
typist  and  deride  the  efforts  of  clever,  strong, 
masterful  man  to  take  the  queenly  citadel  by 
storm.  These  newly -enfranchised  women 
are  rarely  sufficiently  sure  of  themselves  to 
ignore  man  as  they  feel  he  ought  to  be 
ignored.  They  are  rude  to  him  in  the  mass 
in  order  to  counteract  a  despicable,  secret 
desire  to  appoint  some  individual  manifesta- 
tion of  him  their  master.  They  throw  away 
the  one  effective  weapon  of  their  sex  of  their 
own  free  will,  but  they  are  not  prepared 
to  face  the  resultant  loss  of  all  their  battles 
with  philosophic  calm.  They  disdain  the 
idea  of  charming  men,  but  are  dismayed 
when  they  find  that  men  are  not  charmed. 
Behind  the  most  ferocious  Suffragette  there 
still  lurks  woman,  with  one  eye  on  the  world 
and  one  on  her  mirror,  and  therefore  she 
cannot  see  to  fight. 


THE   NEW  SEX  147 

It  is  for  this  reason  that  men  have  been 
able  so  far  to  treat  the  whole  problem  of 
the  Suffragettes  with  tolerant  good -humour  ; 
but  the  man  dwells  in  a  fool's  paradise  (and 
not  a  bad  place  in  which  to  dwell  either!) 
who  does  not  realize  that  behind  this  insig- 
nificant demand  for  votes  lies  hidden  the 
germs  of  a  struggle  of  a  far  more  desperate 
character.  It  must  be  remembered  that  the 
standard  of  feminine  education  is  steadily 
rising,  and  more  women  are  becoming  self- 
supporting  every  year.  Now,  the  whole 
tendency  of  modern  education  is  to  arouse 
in  the  individual  that  curious  form  of  dis- 
content known  as  ambition,  without  provid- 
ing him,  or  her,  with  any  efficient  means 
of  satisfying  it.  In  man  this  hopeful,  help- 
less state  of  mind  is  almost  normal,  but  for 
woman  it  has  the  fatal  attraction  of  novelty. 
For  countless  generations  she  has  been  con- 
tent with  waging  the  placid  warfare  of  home 
life,  and  its  little  victories  and  little  defeats 
have  composed  the  history  of  her  days.  But 
now,  as  it  were  in  a  dream,  she  sees  the 
world  that  man  has  conquered  opening  to 
her  feet,  and,  the  dream  being  new,  she  does 


148  MONOLOGUES 

not  realize  that  the  boundaries  of  that  world 
are  no  wider  than  the  boundaries  of  the 
kingdom  that  she  has  ruled  hitherto  ;  and 
she  longs  to  change  the  substance  for  the 
shadow.  Revolting  against  the  divine  pur- 
pose of  her  motherhood,  she  covets  the  un- 
real splendour  of  the  purposeless  lives  of 
men.  Why  should  she,  she  asks,  with  her 
hands  and  her  eyes  and  her  brain,  be  no 
more  than  a  mother  and  a  nurse  of  babies? 
She  does  not  stay  to  consider  that  man's 
part  in  the  universe  is  even  smaller  than 
this.  She  wishes  to  sacrifice  the  ennobling 
privileges  of  her  sex  for  the  glamour  with 
which  men  hide  the  weary  emptiness  of  their 
days.  And  circumstance  is  helping  her  to 
do  it. 

The  revolt  of  woman  against  motherhood 
is  no  new  thing ;  but  whereas  in  bygone 
years  we  have  been  accustomed  to  regard 
it  as  an  eccentricity,  I  am  not  sure  that  in 
the  future  we  may  not  find  it  a  very  serious 
factor  in  our  national  life.  I  believe  that 
among  the  English  middle  classes  the  birth- 
rate is  already  abnormally  low,  and  when, 
as  seems  likely  to  happen  sooner  or  later, 


THE  NEW  SEX  149 

the  whole  of  our  population  joins  the  middle 
class,  the  effect  of  the  new  feminine  ambi- 
tions will  certainly  be  very  serious. 

I  am  aware  that,  so  far  from  attacking 
motherhood,  the  actual  Suffragettes  of  to-day 
find  it  one  of  the  most  useful  weapons  in 
their  oratorical  armoury  ;  but  the  fact  re- 
mains that  they  themselves,  the  pioneers  of 
a  movement  that  is  to  work  wonders  for 
their  sex,  have  done  very  little  to  supply 
the  incessant  demand  of  the  State  for  babies, 
and  it  is  difficult  not  to  conclude  that  the 
tendency  is  for  the  intelligent  woman  of  the 
day  to  examine  the  problem  and  find  that 
it  is  not  worth  her  while  to  be  a  mother. 
The  only  drawback  of  this  decision  is  that 
it  renders  her  absolutely  useless  and  even 
wasteful  to  the  country  that  gives  her  shelter. 
She  eats  food  and  burns  coal,  but  so  far  as 
human  progress  or  the  prosperity  of  the 
State  is  concerned  she  might  just  as  well 
not  be  there  at  all.  We  human  creatures 
may  humbug  ourselves  as  we  will,  but  the 
first  law  of  our  existence  is  that  we  must 
continue  the  race.  For  women  the  breeding 
and  raising  of  children  have  proved  sufficient 


150  MONOLOGUES 

to  completely  occupy  the  efficient  section  of 
their  lives.  The  duties  that  men  inherit  are 
smaller,  and  they  have  found  it  necessary  to 
invent  politics,  art,  science,  justice,  educa- 
tion, and  a  thousand  other  toys  to  while 
away  the  idle  hours  and  to  help  them  to 
conceal  their  relative  unimportance  from  the 
female  sex.  Hitherto  \ve  have  most  of  us 
imagined  that  women  could  see  through  the 
hollow  pretence  of  our  lives,  and  it  comes 
as  a  shock  to  discover  that  there  are  women, 
and  clever  women  at  that,  capable  of  envy- 
ing us  our  possession  of  gaudy,  painted  wings 
that  glisten  in  the  sunlight  prettily  enough, 
but  will  not  help  us  to  fly.  Heaven  knows 
we  are  some  of  us  weary  enough  of  this 
load  of  petty  shams  that  the  women  of  to- 
day seem  to  covet !  We  have  got  to  live  out 
our  days,  and  we  may  as  well  make  the 
best  of  them,  but  surely  it  is  permissible  to 
remark  that  they  do  these  things  better  in 
bee-hives. 

I  have  ventured  to  call  my  article  the 
"  New  Sex,"  and,  looking  ahead,  it  is  not 
unreasonable  to  see  women  drifting  into  two 
strongly -divided  camps.  The  one  intellectual, 


THE   NEW   SEX  151 

energetic,  independent,  and  supremely  use- 
less ;  the  other  emotional,  affectionate, 
placid,  and  in  all  things  motherly.  The 
weakness  of  the  former  camp  will  be  its 
sterility,  though  doubtless  every  generation 
will  send  its  tithe  of  recruits.  The  strength 
of  the  latter  camp  will  be  its  permanence. 
With  the  intellectual  women  men  will  fight, 
as  they  fight  with  each  other,  on  terms  of 
miserable  equality.  To  the  emotional  women 
they  will  go,  as  they  go  now,  to  justify  their 
existence  and  to  meet  their  fate.  The  woman 
who  wishes  that  she  had  been  born  a  man 
is  a  fool. 


XVIII 
ON    EDITORS 

IN  spite  of  their  lack  of  faith,  the  present 
generation  is  but  little  tolerant  of  those  who 
make  it  their  business  to  reveal,  and  thereby 
to  destroy,  the  heart  of  the  great  mysteries. 
Perhaps  it  is  that,  though  we  do  not  believe 
in  anything  in  particular,  we  do  not  wish 
to  accept  the  necessary  responsibilities  of  our 
sceptical  attitude  towards  things  in  general. 
Like  the  mythical  but  ubiquitous  ostrich,  we 
had  rather  veil  our  eyes  with  the  sands  of 
doubt,  which  is  half-sister  to  faith,  than 
acknowledge  the  wholly  inimicable  character 
of  the  shadows  that  haunt  the  desert  in  which 
we  live.  We  do  not  believe,  but  we  are 
unwilling  to  be  told  that  we  do  not  believe. 
And  of  our  fear  we  create  a  virtue  of  broad- 
mindedness.  Of  all  the  concrete  mysteries, 
none  is  more  loyally  and  watchfully  guarded 

152 


ON  EDITORS  153 

than  the  mystery  of  the  editor.  Dimly,  like 
a  dream  seen  from  the  heart  of  a  dream, 
we  are  permitted  to  perceive  that  here  is 
a  Force,  a  Power,  a  Cause  that  induces 
multitudinous  and  widely -scattered  effects. 
We  conceive  him  as  a  being  essentially 
super-human,  a  subtle  judge  of  right  and 
wrong,  a  dreamer  of  gigantic  dreams,  whose 
messages  to  us  have  the  emphasis  of  an 
inspired  command.  To  all  ordinary  men 
and  women  he  remains  invisible ;  it  is 
enough  to  have  met  a  sub -editor  who  has 
touched  the  great  man's  hand,  an  office-boy 
who  has  filled  his  ink-pot.  Not  that  we 
would  wish  to  see  him  if  we  had  the  power, 
for  his  infallibility  \vould  scourge  us  for  a 
hundred  mental  weaknesses.  Even  his 
thoughts,  we  feel,  are  correctly  punctuated. 

It  is  not  without  a  just  sense  of  the  value 
of  mysteries  that  I  hazard  the  assertion  that 
editors  are  not  really  like  this.  It  is  not 
passing  the  bounds  of  a  decent  reticence  to 
remark  that  by  daylight  they  vary  a  little, 
but,  nevertheless,  in  all  essentials  resemble 
the  ordinary  man.  If  I  had  to  form  an 
impressionist  sketch  from  my  vague  recol- 


154  MONOLOGUES 

lections  of  the  type,  I  think  I  should  draw 
a  timid,  hesitant  man,  very  well  informed 
on  one  or  two  subjects,  but  with  the  vast 
ignorance  of  the  traditional  judge  on  things 
in  general.  I  should  represent  him  as  peep- 
ing gratefully  at  a  catalogue  of  spring  bulbs 
in  the  intervals  of  directing  the  affairs  of 
the  Empire.  Honest,  kindly,  conscientiously 
anxious  to  reconcile  the  dim  remnants  of 
his  youthful  sestheticism  with  his  duty  to- 
wards his  directors,  his  advertisement 
manager,  and  his  family.  Utterly  out  of 
touch  with  the  literature  of  his  day,  but  with 
a  jealous  admiration  for  Milton,  Dr.  John- 
son, and  Thackeray,  and  a  very  great  con- 
tempt for  the  frivolous  graces  of  modern 
prose.  A  man,  as  I  have  siaid,  essentially 
timid,  who  would  be  reduced  to  dust  in  a 
day  if  he  were  not  handsomely  guarded  by 
an  army  of  cynical  sub -editors  and  truculent 
office-boys.  Some  such  shape  my  fancy 
portrait  would  assume. 

But  this  is  a  fancy  portrait — as  far  from 
the  truth,  perhaps,  as  the  imagined  editor  of 
a  literary-minded  boy.  I  think  the  tradi- 
tional editor  is  largely  founded  on  these 


ON   EDITORS  155 

happy  dreams  of  scribbling  youth.  Suck- 
ing the  midnight  fountain-pen,  and  writing 
with  that  flattering  ease  indistinguishable,  by 
night,  from  inspiration,  it  is  natural  that 
youthful  writers  should  conceive  that  editors 
are  on  the  side  of  the  literary  angels.  "  If 
my  blank-verse  tragedy  is  good,"  young 
Asphodel  says  to  himself,  "  the  editor  of  the 
Chimes  will  be  glad  to  print  it  in  his  paper, 
and  give  me  golden  sovereigns  to  buy  roses 
for  Phyllis."  The  cynic,  being  the  man  who 
knows,  would  deal  harshly  with  poor  Aspho- 
del's dream.  He  would  point  out  that  the 
least  judicious  assistant  would  not  allow  the 
tragedy  to  reach  the  editor,  that  even  if  it 
did  the  editor  would  not  know  whether  it 
was  good  or  bad,  that  even  if,  personally, 
he  thought  it  was  good  he  would  not  dare 
to  print  it,  and,  though  this  is  beside  the 
case,  that  Phyllis  would  prefer  to  receive 
jewellery  or  chocolates.  Fortunately,  the 
knowledge  is  hidden  from  Asphodel  ;  he 
writes  his  tragedy  for  the  waste-paper  basket, 
and  doubtless  learns  something  in  the  writing 
of  it. 

A  philosopher  might  deduce  something  of 


156  MONOLOGUES 

the  novelist's  soul  from  the  fact  that,  saving 
of  the  photographs  of  the  modern  realistic 
school,  the  average  editor  in  fiction  is  not 
unlike  the  ideal  person  for  whom  young  As- 
phodel twangs  his  ambitious  lyre.  Nothing 
can  be  more  touching  than  the  amount 
of  attention  these  gentlemen  give  to  the 
heroine  when  she  takes  to  story -writing  in 
order  to  keep  her  younger  sister  at  Girton. 
Instead  of  rejecting  her  with  printed  slips 
of  a  clammy  coldness,  they  give  her  encour- 
agement, good  advice,  and  crisp  five-pound 
notes  with  a  lavishness  that  real  editors 
would  do  well  to  imitate.  I  notice  that  these 
fictional  editors  are  always  curiously  suscep- 
tible to  the  charms  of  young  women  in  dis- 
tress, but,  perhaps,  it  would  be  tactless  to 
inquire  whether  this  pleasant  editorial  trait 
has  any  foundation  in  fact.  I  have  never 
met  a  heroine  in  real  life  who  has  sought 
assistance  from  editors  by  breathing  on  their 
grizzled  heads,  but  it  is  possible  that  these 
things  are  done.  I  do  know  a  boy  of  eleven 
who  sent  a  short  story  to  a  well-known 
London  daily  paper  and  received  in  reply 
a  three-page  letter  of  kindly  criticism  in  the 


ON  EDITORS  157 

authentic  handwriting  of  the  editor.  But  if 
I  had  found  this  incident  in  a  novel  I  would 
have  thought  it  improbable. 

I  have  said  above  that  in  all  essentials 
modern  editors  resemble  the  ordinary  man, 
and  it  is  only  going  a  step  further  to  assert, 
with  due  deference  to  our  common  need  of 
mysteries,  that  editors  do  not  exist  at  all. 
There  was  a  time  when  the  personality  of 
an  editor  dominated  the  paper  he  edited ; 
to-day  the  newspaper  seems  to  eliminate  the 
man.  Very  few  people  could  name  the 
editors  of  newspapers  to  which  they  are 
regular  subscribers,  and  fewer  still,  perhaps, 
would  notice  any  alteration  in  a  newspaper 
if  the  editor  were  changed.  It  must  be  ad- 
mitted that  this  state  of  things  is  rarely  the 
fault  of  the  editor.  Nominally  a  tyrant,  he 
is  in  truth  the  slave  of  many  masters  :  his 
proprietors,  the  advertisers  on  whose  favour 
the  continuance  of  the  paper  depends,  the 
conservatism  that  drives  the  oldest  readers 
of  a  paper  to  passionate  rebuke  if  the  paper 
shows  any  signs  of  change,  all  these  are 
forces  to  be  reckoned  with  and  obeyed. 
Then  the  English  law  of  libel  frequently 


158  MONOLOGUES 

demands  not  merely  a  suppression  of  the 
truth,  but  a  downright  affirmation  of  false- 
hood. Against  these  powers  the  strongest 
personality  can  make  but  a  feeble  struggle. 
Newspapers  ought  really  to  die  as  soon  as 
they  have  accumulated  traditions  to  check 
their  growth  ;  failing  this,  you  can  trace  the 
passage  of  an  editor  down  Fleet  Street  by 
the  clanking  of  the  fetters.  Years  ago,  per- 
haps, he  wrote  lyrics  more  passionate  than 
Swinburne's,  more  lucid  than  those  of  the 
Restoration  singers  ;  to-day  he  can  only 
consider  the  pretentious  doggerel  that  passes 
for  verse  at  General  Elections.  A  power  in 
the  land,  he  dare  not  give  his  honest  opinion 
on  any  mortal  or  immortal  subject  if  that 
opinion  is  in  any  way  opposed  to  the  opinion 
of  his  readers.  His  very  position  deprives 
him  of  the  right  of  free  speech. 

The  decay  of  the  Press  began  in  England 
when  journals  first  endeavoured  to  give  their 
readers  what  they  wanted  rather  than  what 
they  lacked.  The  editor  automatically 
became  the  servant  of  the  public,  where 
before  he  had  been  the  public's  master.  Pills 
and  soap  and  publishers,  board-school  in- 


ON  EDITORS  159 

tolerance  and  academic  priggishness,  fraudu- 
lent politics,  and  a  fulsome  obedience  to  the 
common  sense  that  is  common  without  being 
sense,  these  are  the  forces  that  dictate  the 
policy  of  most  of  the  successful  modern 
newspapers.  The  average  man  is  a  fool,  to 
be  pardoned  in  this  world  and  crowned  in 
the  next,  because  he  does  not  realize  his 
folly ;  but  by  degrees  he  has  been  per- 
mitted to  bring  nearly  all  his  periodical 
literature  within  the  range  of  his  empty 
mind.  He  expects  his  daily  newspaper  to 
support  his  own  wavering  opinions,  and  if 
one  newspaper  is  recalcitrant  he  spends  his 
copper  on  another.  This  man  with  a  penny 
or  twopence  a  'day  to  spend  in  literature  that 
shall  start  no  disturbing  echo  in  the  vacant 
corridors  of  his  mind  is  the  virtual  editor 
of  half  the  papers  in  England.  The  power 
of  the  Press,  of  which  we  hear  so  much, 
is  little  more  than  the  lackey's  power  \io 
wheedle  a  coin  or  two  from  his  master  by 
dint  of  flattering  obedience  ;  and  the  people 
have  come  to  demand  both  the  flattery  and 
the  obedience  as  a  right. 

The  perfect  editor  would  edit  the  perfect 


160  MONOLOGUES 

newspaper  because  he  would  insist  on 
making  of  it  what  he  wished,  and  I  think  it 
would  be  a  feature  of  his  perfection  that 
he  would  allow  his  contributors  to  write 
what  they  pleased.  He  would  collect  indi- 
vidualities as  a  boy  collects  postage-stamps, 
and  having  collected  them  he  would  appre- 
ciate their  varied  colour  and  design,  and 
would  not  endeavour  to  mould  them  into  a 
worthless,  meaningless  lump.  He  would  not 
go  out  of  his  way  either  to  please  or  dis- 
please possible  advertisers.  He  would 
neither  flatter  nor  abuse  great  men.  And, 
lastly,  I  have  written  this  article  in  vain  if 
it  is  not  apparent  that  I  think  this  most 
important  of  all :  the  perfect  editor  would 
not  care  one  proverbial  damn  about  his 
readers. 


XIX 

THE    REVOLT   OF  THE    PHILISTINES 

I  DO  not  know  whether  it  has  ever  occurred 
to  the  reader,  who  possesses,  no  doubt,  care- 
fully cultured  tastes  in  literature  and  art,  to 
sympathize  with  the  point  of  view  of  the 
man  or  woman  who  has  not  this  supreme 
advantage.  I  use  the  word  sympathize  ad- 
visedly, for  it  is  impossible  to  regard  the 
individual  who  has  failed  to  explore  the  finest 
country  of  the  kingdom  he  inherits  as  any- 
thing but  unfortunate.  I  would  not  call  him 
wrong  with  the  intellectual  snobs,  and  still 
less  would  I  call  him  right  in  the  genial 
spirit  of  comradeship  that  seems  to  inspire 
a  certain  section  of  the  democratic  Press. 
I  cannot  help  regarding  him  in  much  the 
same  way  as  I  regard  a  man  born  blind, 
who  has  never  had  the  privilege  of  seeing 
flowers  or  the  faces  of  pretty  girls,  and,  not 


162  MONOLOGUES 

having  seen  them,  is  quite  incapable  of 
realizing  what  he  lacks.  There  is,  however, 
a  distinction  between  the  two  cases,  for 
whereas  our  blind  man  cannot  see  at  all, 
even  the  most  ignorant  people  have  rudi- 
mentary eyes  for  art ;  and  it  may  be  ad- 
mitted that  they  derive  almost  as  much  enjoy- 
ment from  the  crude  pictures  and  books  that 
they  can  understand  as  a  person  of  culture 
derives  from  the  last  word  in  expression  of 
some  great  artist.  It  may  be  said  that  the 
appeal  of  certain  kinds  of  bad  art  to  the 
uncultured  is  purely  emotional  ;  but  I  have 
known  sound  critics  of  literature  who  were 
willing  to  confess  that  their  judgment  of  a 
book  was  largely  influenced  by  the  effect  it 
produced  on  their  emotions,  though,  of 
course,  their  intellect  had  trained  their  emo- 
tions to  require  subtler  food  than  that  which 
brightens  the  eyes  of  maid-servants  and  sends 
factory -girls  singing  to  their  work. 

For  the  human  being  who  has  learnt  to 
appreciate  good  art,  bad  art  becomes  impos- 
sible and  even  painful.  But  bad  art  is  more 
than  sufficient  to  allay  the  aesthetic  cravings 
of  the  large  majority  of  people,  and  they 


THE   REVOLT  OF  THE   PHILISTINES     163 

therefore  not  unnaturally  regard  fine  pictures 
and  books  as  being  meaningless,  pretentious, 
and  frequently  ludicrous  ;  and  they  further 
consider  that  the  persons  who  profess  to 
appreciate  such  pictures  and  books  are  hum- 
bugs of  the  most  irritating  character,  who 
are  secretly  amusing  themselves  at  their  ex- 
pense. It  is  necessary  to  understand  this 
attitude  of  mind  of  the  average  Philistine, 
because  to  it  is  due  that  bitter  spirit  of  in- 
tolerance directed  against  the  beautiful  as  the 
aesthetically  educated  minority  conceives  it. 
The  average  mind  is  not  soured  because 
it  cannot  find  any  beauty  in  Keats  or  Shelley  ; 
it  is  angry  that  any  one  should  pretend 
there  is  any  beauty  there  to  find  ;  and  really 
this  is  a  very  natural  attitude  for  the  average 
mind  to  adopt.  In  asking  a  man  to  mis- 
trust the  evidence  of  his  own  senses  as  to 
what  is  or  is  not  beautiful,  you  are  ask- 
ing him  to  admit  that  his  individuality,  to 
which  he  clings  as  his  only  birthright,  is 
a  possession  of  no  particular  value  after  all. 
I  repeat,  then,  that  it  is  not  unnatural  that 
he  should  prefer  to  think  that  his  own  judg- 
ments are  to  be  relied  on,  and  that  the 


164  MONOLOGUES 

superior  person  who  abuses  the  art  he 
loves,  and  seeks  to  set  up  incomprehensible 
standards,  is  an  aesthetic  charlatan. 

With  these  facts  in  view,  the  most  ardent 
admirer  of  Robert  Browning's  "  Red  Cotton 
Nightcap  Country  "  should  hesitate  to  con- 
demn the  Philistine  merely  because  he  is 
intolerant  and  a  little  apt  to  snigger  in  his 
beard  when  the  name  of  Browning  is  men- 
tioned. Nor,  though  I  have  often  heard  it 
pleaded  against  him,  can  the  aggressiveness 
be  said  to  be  wholly  on  the  side  of  the 
armies  of  Askalon.  We  spend  his  money  on 
pictures  which  he  finds  absurd  ;  we  fill  his 
streets  with  architecture  which  he  considers 
hideously  ugly  ;  and  we  call  him  a  fool  early 
and  late  because  he  will  not  buy  and  read 
books  which  he  cannot  understand,  or  sup- 
port a  national  drama  that  he  considers 
barren  and  unnecessary.  What  can  he  do 
in  revenge?  Once  upon  a  time  he  could 
deride  our  long  hair  and  our  sunflowers  and 
condemn  our  laxity  of  morals,  but  to-day 
we  dress  as  he  does,  and  conceal  our  little 
weaknesses  under  a  similar  disguise.  We 
have  a  dozen  periodicals,  a  dozen  societies 


THE  REVOLT  OF  THE  PHILISTINES    165 

in  which  we  can  get  up  and  abuse  his  ignor- 
ance to  our  heart's  content.  But  there  is 
not  a  newspaper  in  the  country — no,  not 
even  now — in  which  an  honest  admirer  of 
Mr.  W.  J.  Eaton  (author  of  the  "Fireman's 
Wedding "  and  many  other  broadsheet 
ballads)  can  say  that  Wordsworth  was  a 
babbler  and  Byron  a  nasty -minded  aristo- 
crat, and  that  people  who  profess  to  admire 
them  are  in  urgent  need  of  further  educa- 
tion. You  and  I,  dear  reader,  from  the 
heights  of  our  superiority,  can  score  off  the 
Philistine  as  often  as  we  wish.  How  can 
the  Philistine  get  his  own  back? 

Taking  everything  into  consideration,  I  am 
only  astonished  that  the  Philistine  should  be 
so  tractable  as  he  is.  It  must  be  remem- 
bered that  he  is  in  a  sweeping  majority  in 
the  land,  and  that  this  is  an  age  very  much 
inclined  to  meet  the  demands  of  majorities 
half  way.  Yet,  with  the  possible  exception 
of  certain  newspapers  circulating  entirely  in 
Philistia,  which,  while  they  decline  to  share 
his  attitude  of  mind,  are  willing  to  call  him 
a  very  fine  fellow  for  his  halfpence,  the  posi- 
tion of  the  aesthetic  aristocracy  is  stronger 


166  MONOLOGUES 

than  ever.  There  is  no  question  here  of 
yielding  to  the  rights  of  the  democracy ; 
rather  it  is  coming  more  and  more  to  be 
a  canon  of  criticism  that  there  must  be 
something  wrong  with  a  work  of  art  that 
has  a  wide  popular  appeal.  Hitherto,  it 
must  be  presumed  that  the  general  lack  of 
interest  in  art  of  any  kind  has  saved  this 
tyranny  from  meeting  the  normal  fate  of  all 
tyrannies,  but  there  are  not  wanting  signs 
that  this  popular  indifference  is  coming  to 
an  end.  Two  or  three  generations  of  a 
knowledge  of  the  arts  of  reading  and  writ- 
ing, and  the  steadily  rising  level  of  the  edu- 
cation that  is  provided  for  any  one  who 
wants  it,  is  bound  to  make  a  difference  sooner 
or  later.  And  then.  .  .  . 

Will  the  Philistines  rebel  against  the 
authority  of  the  few  ;  will  they  claim  the  right 
to  elect  great  artists  for  themselves,  and  to 
crown  with  immortal  laurels  those  who  have 
given  them  pleasure  and  satisfied  their  sense 
of  the  beautiful?  The  mind  shrinks  at  the 
thought  of  the  reconstruction  of  museums 
and  picture  galleries  that  their  revolt  would 
bring  about.  Chromo  -lithographs  would 


THE  REVOLT  OF  THE   PHILISTINES    167 

deck  the  walls  of  the  National  Gallery,  and 
the  Royal  Academy  would  be  devoted  to  the 
talents  of  the  pavement  artist  unless  he  be, 
as  I  sometimes  suspect,  a  product  of  deca- 
dent sestheticism.  On  the  newspapers  the 
new  movement  could  hardly  fail  to  react, 
and  the  working-man's  epithet  would  incar- 
nadine all  their  leading  articles.  It  would 
be,  perhaps,  too  wild  a  flight  of  fancy  to 
imagine  that  even  these  events  would  induce 
the  publishers  to  depart  from  the  traditional 
conservatism  of  their  trade,  and  doubtless, 
as  now,  they  would  continue  in  a  dignified 
manner  to  publish  books  that  no  sane  man 
could  be  expected  to  read.  But  in  all  other 
centres  of  artistic  activity  there  would  be 
chaos,  and  it  is  hard  to  say  where  the 
movement  would  stop. 

It  is  impossible  to  dissociate  the  idea  of 
revolution  from  that  of  bloodshed,  and  if 
the  small  group  of  critics  and  artists  refused 
to  revoke  their  former  dogmatic  judgments 
the  revolt  of  the  Philistines  might  prove  to 
be  serious  indeed.  As  in  a  dream,  not 
wholly  deprived  of  splendour,  I  can  see  Bed- 
ford Park  going  up  to  heaven  in  a  shape 


168  MONOLOGUES 

of  flame,  and  Chelsea  riven  to  its  artistic 
heart  by  the  fire  and  hazard  of  war.  I  can 
see  critics  shot  down  in  the  street  like  dogs, 
and  the  bodies  of  poets  swinging  from  the 
lamp -posts  of  Westminster.  The  air  would 
be  bitter  with  the  smoke  of  burning  books, 
and  the  feet  of  the  mentally  poor  would 
spring  buoyantly  from  the  pavements,  re- 
leased from  the  intolerable  load  we  have  laid 
upon  them  since  they  were  born.  In  broad 
daylight  grown  men  would  praise  the  Albert 
Memorial  and  call  it  lovely,  and  women 
would  chant  the  ballads  of  Mr.  G.  R.  Sims 
without  shame  for  the  ignorance  of  their 
sex.  Wherever  a  man  might  go  he  would 
see  men  and  women  writing  their  autobio- 
graphies, free  at  last  to  express  the  miracu- 
lous spirit  of  their  lives,  without  fear  of  the 
critics  and  their  iron  laws.  Like  paupers 
splitting  firewood,  so  would  they  split  infi- 
nitives with  a  light  pen  and  a  merry  heart 
for  the  wonder  of  the  things  they  had  to  tell 
their  fellows.  All  men  would  be  painters, 
critics,  poets,  architects  ;  in  a  word,  all  men 
would  be  artists.  Here  and  there,  perhaps, 
in  a  quiet  corner  one  or  two  of  us  would 


THE  REVOLT  OF  THE  PHILISTINES    169 

mourn  our  lost  aristocracy,  but  all  around 
us  would  surge  the  triumphant  people,  let 
loose  in  a  world  the  like  of  which  they  had 
not  known,  joined  in  a  universal  brotherhood 
of  bad  art. 

This,  if  you  will,  is  a  fantastic  specula- 
tion, but  there  is,  I  think,  an  element  of  truth 
in  it.  To-day  the  majorities  win,  and  it  is 
not  unlikely  that  sooner  or  later  the  majority 
will  triumph  over  the  critics  in  matters  of 
art,  and  that  the  unfixed  standards  of  beauty 
will  be  lowered  to  meet  the  tastes  of  the 
half-cultured  and  the  half -educated.  And  the 
only  melancholy  satisfaction  to  be  derived 
from  the  foreboding  is  that  we  can  do 
nothing  to  prevent  its  being  fulfilled.  There 
is  no  stopping  majorities  when  they  are  out 
for  blood,  and  sooner  or  later  they  will  realize 
the  importance  of  art,  and  sweep  us  off  the 
face  of  the  earth.  The  only  miracle  is  that 
the  Philistines  have  endured  the  brow-beat- 
ing of  aesthetic  critics  so  long. 


XX 

THE    VIRTUES    OF    GETTING    DRUNK 

ONE  of  the  disadvantages  of  writing  in  the 
language  of  a  Puritan  people  is  that  before 
you  argue  about  a  problem  at  all  you  are 
expected  to  consider  it  from  the  standpoint 
of  conventional  morality.  But,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  our  moralities  are  dogmatic,  which 
means  that  they  are  either  above  or  below 
argument.  Thus  the  many  excellent  persons 
who  are  of  the  opinion  that  drunkenness 
is  in  itself  a  sin,  apart  from  its  effect 
on  the  individual  or  the  race,  are  ob- 
viously not  prepared  to  argue  about  drunk- 
enness at  all,  and  I  should  be  the  last  to 
condemn  the  comfortable  convention  that 
absolves  a  man  from  all  intellectual  effort 
and  responsibility  in  judging  between  right 
and  wrong.  But  there  are,  I  imagine, 


1TO 


THE  VIRTUES  OF  GETTING  DRUNK    171 

a  great  many  people  whose  consciences 
will  not  allow  their  judgment  to  sleep 
with  the  placid  generalizations  of  their 
forefathers,  and  for  these  the  art  of  get- 
ting drunk  must  be  examined  in  all  its  as- 
pects before  it  can  be  condemned.  Broadly 
speaking,  even  the  unmoral  have  agreed  to 
regard  drunkenness  as  foolish,  but  the  con- 
suming of  alcoholic  beverages,  which  can 
only  be  regarded  as  the  process  by  which 
a  man  becomes  drunk,  has  many  eloquent 
admirers  and  supporters.  This,  I  know,  is 
a  favourite  argument  of  those  passionate 
fanatics  so  humorously  labelled  with  the 
word  temperance,  who  hold  that  a  man  who 
drinks  a  glass  of  beer  is  a  glass  of  beer 
nearer  intoxication  and  nothing  more.  The 
normal  answer  to  these  raucous  moralists 
is  that  a  man  who  eats  a  muffin  is  not 
really  in  any  greater  danger  of  perishing 
of  a  surfeit  of  muffins  than  he  was  before 
he  consumed  it.  But  in  arguing,  it  is  the 
divine  right  of  the  individual  to  crown  what 
argument  he  pleases  with  his  approval, 
and  I  confess  that  this  method  of  regard- 
ing every  one  who  eats  a  liqueur  choco- 


172  MONOLOGUES 

late    as    a    potential    drunkard    appeals    to 
my  fancy  and  satisfies  my  reason. 

Apart  from  the  moral  aspect,  it  is  neces- 
sary to  consider  the  effect  of  getting  drunk 
on  the  mind  and  body  of  the  individual,  and 
also,  in  so  far  as  it  affects  his  welfare,  the 
effect  his  getting  drunk  has  on  the  com- 
munity at  large.  Now,  so  far  as  the  former 
part  of  the  problem  is  concerned,  I  notice 
a  curious  thing.  Like  every  one  else  who 
abuses  his  noble  gift  of  sight  by  reading 
newspapers,  I  have  read  an  extraordinary 
mass  of  condemnation  of  drunkenness  from 
the  pens  of  doctors,  sociologists,  clergy- 
men, reformed  drunkards,  and  other  inter- 
ested persons,  but  I  do  not  recollect  coming 
across  one  respectable  argument  against  a 
man  occasionally  getting  drunk.  To  get 
drunk  is  to  consume  alcohol  to  excess, 
and  all  the  statistics  and  diatribes  I  have 
discovered  have  been  directed  against  excess 
of  this  excess,  rather  than  against  the  excess 
in  itself.  Of  course  I  know  that  there 
is  a  widely  accepted  theory  that  drinking 
begets  drinking,  but,  except  in  the  case 
of  persons  with  a  natural  tendency  to 


THE   VIRTUES   OF  GETTING  DRUNK    173 

intemperance,  I  do  not  believe  that  this 
theory  has  any  foundation  in  fact ;  while 
the  yet  wilder  theory  that  drunkenness 
begets  drunkenness,  that  a  man  who  has 
once  had  too  much  to  drink  is  thereby 
encouraged  to  drink  to  excess  again,  is, 
when  we  remember  the  extreme  physical 
discomforts  with  which  Nature  rebukes  ex- 
cess, altogether  beyond  belief  of  any  reason- 
able person. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  average  consumer 
of  alcoholic  beverages  never  gets  drunk,  if 
only  for  fear  of  the  bodily  pains  that  state 
induces,  and  my  mistrust  of  compromise 
in  general  would  lead  me  to  suspect  that 
this  timidity  is  a  vice  rather  than  a  virtue  ; 
that  he  is  likely  reaping  the  varied  ills  that 
we  are  told  are  the  necessary  consequences 
of  the  consumption  of  alcohol,  without  enjoy- 
ing the  undoubted  benefits  that  accrue  from 
coming  to  grips  now  and  again  with  the 
laws  that  control  his  life.  Just  as  a  child, 
who  has  sobbed  its  way  back  to  penitence 
on  its  mother's  lap,  feels  wiser  and  happier 
than  it  did  before  it  committed  its  little 
fault,  so  the  child  man  is  apt  to  win  a 


174  MONOLOGUES 

greater  love  and  a  fuller  knowledge  of  his 
mother  Nature ;  often  she  has  punished 
him  with  her  frowns,  and  dried  his  tears 
with  her  sunshine.  After  all,  we  are  no 
more  than  little  children  on  a  big  scale : 
we  are  not  afraid  of  dark  rooms,  but  we 
are  afraid  of  the  darkness  of  the  heavens  ; 
we  do  not  run  from  our  own  shadows, 
but  we  stand  panic-stricken  within  the 
shadows  of  our  own  hearts.  And  the 
analogy  may  be  trusted  further.  In  a 
nursery  it  is  always  the  best  child  that 
gets  into  all  the  scrapes.  It  has  inherited 
its  due  share  of  naughtiness,  and  it  is 
not  cunning  enough  to  keep  its  transgres- 
sions within  the  vague  limits  of  the  law. 
And  we  may  trace  the  way  of  the  simple 
sinners  through  life  readily  enough.  A 
drunken  man  walks  down  the  street,  and 
the  hypocrites  lean  from  the  windows  of 
their  houses  and  rend  the  skies  with  their 
clamorous  disgust.  It  is  always  pretty  safe 
to  trust  a  man  who  wears  his  vices  on  his 
sleeve. 

But   I    fear   that   I    have    strayed    a   little 
from    my    argument.      I    hold    no   brief   for 


THE   VIRTUES   OF  GETTING  DRUNK     175 

drunkenness,  but  I  do  think  that  it  is  a 
good  thing  that  a  man  should  occasionally, 
very  occasionally  if  you  wish,  drink  too 
much.  In  the  first  place,  this  does  not 
leave  him,  like  many  of  the  less  concrete 
vices,  uncertain  as  to,  or  even  ignorant 
of,  his  transgression  ;  and  a  realization  of 
his  own  frailties  keeps  a  man  modest  and 
companionable.  The  greatest  fault  of  tee- 
totallers, so  far  as  I  have  examined  those 
dreary  propagandists,  is  not  that  they 
are  too  consciously  proud  of  their  sobriety 
in  face  of  a  total  absence  of  temptation,  but 
that  they  affect  to  be  wholly  free  from  all 
those  weaknesses  that  knit  individuals,  made 
in  the  image  of  God,  into  a  human  world. 
Yet  it  is  difficult  not  to  believe  that  drunken- 
ness which  reaps  so  violent  and  immediate 
a  punishment  is  not  a  lesser  vice  than  those 
defects  of  meanness  and  hypocrisy  that  a 
man  may  nurture  unpunished  in  his  heart. 
Self-respect  is  a  quality  so  near  akin  to 
self-righteousness  that  in  preserving  the  one 
we  are  always  in  danger  of  breeding  the 
other. 

A  talisman  by  aid  of  which  a  man  may 


176  MONOLOGUES 

remain  tolerant  is  cheaply  purchased  at  the 
price  of  an  occasional  headache,  but  I  am 
willing  to  go  further  and  say  that  I  believe 
that  an  occasional  excess  in  his  cups  is  good 
for  a  man's  mind  and  body  as  well  as 
for  his  heart.  Any  one  who  uses  his  mind 
in  his  work,  though  I  fear  that  this  is  an 
argument  that  only  appeals  to  the  minority, 
will  have  suffered  from  time  to  time  from 
an  attack  of  stateness.  If  he  be  a  mem- 
ber of  Parliament  he  will  find  himself  at 
a  loss  for  a  method  by  which  to  reform 
the  House  of  Lords.  If  he  be  a  writer 
of  little  articles  he  will  find  that  all  the 
little  articles  have  already  been  written  by 
some  one  else.  If  he  be  a  poet  the  music 
of  the  universe  will  sound  in  his  ears  like 
the  thin  voice  of  a  barrel-organ,  heard 
from  afar.  At  such  a  time,  to  betake 
oneself  to  the  wine-bowl,  in  fitting  com- 
pany, is  to  win,  after  the  lapse  of  a  day, 
be  it  said,  a  new  brain.  It  is  as  though 
some  friendly  hand  had  stirred  up  the 
stagnant  mind  with  a  stick,  and  brought 
the  ideas  to  the  surface  like  bubbles.  And 
there  is  a  parallel  state  of  bodily  stale- 


THE  VIRTUES  OF  GETTING  DRUNK    177 

ness,  for  which  the  doctors  prescribe  a 
change  of  air,  that  can  frequently  be  cured 
in  the  same  simple  fashion.  It  seems  as 
though  Nature  likes  obedience,  but  neither 
demands  nor  desires  servility  from  her 
children.  A  day  of  hot  coppers,  suffered 
in  a  mood  of  patient  humility,  sends  a 
man  back  to  his  work  in  the  glad  spirit 
of  a  dew -drunk  butterfly. 

I  do  not  believe  in  making  a  habit  of 
inebriation,  any  more  than  I  believe  in 
making  a  habit  of  doing  anything,  either 
good  or  bad.  To  be  efficacious,  a  remedy 
of  this  kind  must  be  used  cautiously,  and 
only  when  the  occasion  demands  it.  The 
man  who  is  perpetually  drunk  is  no  better 
off  than  the  man  who  is  perpetually  sober, 
and  believers  in  Wilde's  epigram  should  re- 
member that  excess  ceases  to  be  successful 
when  it  becomes  normal.  It  is  difficult, 
as  Montaigne  found  in  considering  a  rather 
similar  problem,  to  lay  down  a  definite 
rule  of  conduct  in  a  matter  of  this  kind, 
but  I  should  think  that  man  very  unfor- 
tunate who  found  it  necessary  to  get  drunk 
more  than  twice  in  a  year.  It  is  possible 

12 


178  MONOLOGUES 

that,  after  a  certain  period  in  a  man's 
life,  when  he  has  sinned  too  often  to 
nourish  any  further  belief  in  his  infalli- 
bility, and  when  his  mind  is  no  longer 
capable  of  giving  him  surprises,  it  is  not 
necessary  for  him  to  get  drunk  at  all. 


XXI 

THE    VERDICT    OF    POSTERITY 

IT  is  very  common  for  critics  and  other 
individuals  who  take  an  interest  in  contem- 
porary art  to  indulge  in  speculations  as  to 
how  far  certain  manifestations  of  that  art, 
which  appeals  to  them,  perhaps,  in  spite  of 
their  better  judgment,  possess  the  quality  of 
durability.  After  Mr.  Kipling's  cloven - 
hoofed  critic  has  examined  a  work,  admitted 
its  prettiness,  and  expressed  a  doubt  as  to 
whether  it  is  art,  there  follows  very  closely 
the  gentleman  who  says,  "  Oh  yes,  it  seems 
to  be  art,  but  will  it  live?  "  And  of  the  two 
he  is  the  harder  to  argue  with.  In  the  first 
place,  it  is  very  difficult  to  say  what  con- 
stitutes life  in  terms  of  works  of  art,  and  it 
may  reasonably  be  doubted  whether  any 
artist's  effort  at  expression  lives  in  the  sense 
in  which  we  use  the  word  in  discussing  the 

179 


180  MONOLOGUES 

claims  of  a  contemporary  artist  whom  we 
do  not  like.  What  we  can  say  is  that  some 
time  after  publication  some  books  are  read 
more  than  others  and  that  many  cease  to 
be  read  at  all ;  that  it  is  not  necessarily, 
the  works  of  art  that  preserve  the  widest 
audience  that  secure  the  greatest  measure  of 
general  esteem,  though  this  may  sound  para- 
doxical ;  and  that  many  of  our  so-called 
English  classics  linger  chiefly  in  the  pages 
of  literary  histories,  and  are  rarely  read  save 
by  experts. 

When  we  leave  art  and  consider  the  attri- 
butes of  human  fame  in  general,  we  are 
bound  to  admit  that  for  the  majority  of  living 
human  beings  the  dead  have  little  interest 
or  significance.  We  adopt,  or  rather,  per- 
haps, adapt,  their  ideas  ;  we  take  advantage 
of  their  discoveries  ;  we  take  up  the  task  of 
existence  where  they  laid  it  down  ;  but  for 
the  rest  we  say,  like  Tyltyl  in  the  "  Blue 
Bird,"  that  there  are  no  dead,  though  our 
motive  is  different.  We  accept  the  theory 
that  a  live  dog  is  better  than  a  dead  lion 
with  whole-hearted  enthusiasm,  and  the 
idiot  who  gibbers  in  the  cell  of  an  asylum 


THE  VERDICT  OF  POSTERITY       181 

is  infinitely  more  alive  to  us  than  Shake- 
speare. Perhaps,  subconsciously,  we  despise 
the  dead  because  they  have  not  been  clever 
enough  to  go  on  living. 

No,  we  will  not  allow  the  ghosts  the 
smallest  fraction  of  the  life  that  boils  in  our 
veins  and  makes  us  commit  crimes  and 
heroic  actions.  Yet  looking  ahead  to  that 
inconceivable  age  when  we,  ourselves,  shall 
be  no  more,  we  display  a  childish  eagerness 
as  to  the  ultimate  fate  of  our  individual  per- 
sonalities. Whether  we  are  criminals  or 
heroes,  we  wish  the  age  to  come  to  be  aware 
of  our  identities,  and  it  is  possible  to  con- 
clude from  the  lives  of  many  of  our  great 
men  that  they  would  rather  be  remembered 
for  their  follies  than  forgotten  altogether. 
Yet  the  man  who  sacrifices  part  of  his  life 
for  posthumous  fame  should  reflect  that  only 
a  small  percentage  of  men  and  women  have 
any  regard  for  the  past,  and  that  the  re- 
mainder will  avail  themselves  of  whatever 
they  may  find  useful  in  his  life's  work,  with- 
out giving  a  thought  to  the  dead  man  who 
was  responsible  for  their  inheritance. 

Nevertheless,  when  we  talk  of  a  work  of 


182  MONOLOGUES 

art  living,  we  mean  that  it  still  retains  its 
individual  appeal  to  a  limited  audience,  and 
in  attempting  an  estimate  of  what  will  sur- 
vive of  contemporary  literature  in  a  hundred 
years'  time  we  must  take  into  consideration 
the  lines  along  which  the  cultured  class  is 
likely  to  develop.  And  here  I  may  remark 
that  in  spite  of  the  spread  of  scholastic  edu- 
cation it  does  not  seem  likely  to  me  that  the 
cultured  class  of  the  future  will  be  any 
greater  in  numbers  than  it  is  now.  It  is 
true  that  nowadays  we  teach  every  one  how 
to  read,  but  at  the  same  time  we  take  care 
to  teach  them  that  the  habit  of  reading  is 
unfortunate  from  the  point  of  view  of  their 
material  welfare.  I  should  like  to  look  for- 
ward to  a  jgolden  age  when  every  one  should 
read  good  books,  but  I  cannot  even  feel  con- 
fident that  a  time  will  come  when  every  one 
will  talk  about  them.  I  foresee  that  the 
cultured  class  of  the  future,  surrounded  on 
all  sides  by  individuals  who  are  uncultured 
from  choice  and  not  from  necessity,  will  tend 
to  become  more  precious  and  more  priggish 
than  ever.  The  gap  between  journalism 
which  caters  for  the  many  and  literature 


THE  VERDICT  OF  POSTERITY       183 

which  can  only  appeal  to  the  fit  few  will 
widen,  and  persons  who  really  take  an  in- 
terest in  English  literature  will  be  regarded 
rather  in  the  light  in  which  students  of 
Anglo-Saxon  are  marvelled  at  now. 

It  should  be  possible  to  deduce  what  con- 
temporary works  this  cultured  minority  will 
find  worth  the  reading  from  the  kind  of 
literature  that  has  worn  down  from  the 
past  to  our  own  day,  with  some  ele- 
ments of  life  lingering  between  the  battered 
boards.  The  difficulty  here  is  to  distinguish 
between  the  books  that  still  command  a 
genuine  if  strictly  limited  public,  and  those 
that  really  only  survive  as  historical  docu- 
ments for  the  student  of  literature.  The 
recent  flood  of  cheap  reprints  gave  us 
numerous  editions  of  books  of  both  classes, 
but  how  far  these  books  were  bought  to 
read,  and  how  far  they  were  bought  as  a 
convenient  substitute  for  valentines  and 
Christmas  cards,  not  even  the  publishers  who 
sold  them  can  say.  This  and  the  habit  of 
giving  books  as  presents  and  prizes  render 
the  circulation  test  unreliable  when  applied 
to  the  classics.  How  many  people  read 


184  MONOLOGUES 

Spenser  to-day?  He  is,  it  seems,  one  of  the 
great  immortals.  But  is  he  read  by  any 
one  outside  what  we  may  call  the  profes- 
sional class  of  book-reader — that  is,  poets, 
essayists,  leader-writers  in  search  of  tags, 
and  Mr.  John  Burns?  Does  any  one  read 
Ben  Jonson?  Does  any  one,  to  come  nearer 
to  our  day — does  any  one  here  read  Shelley? 
These  are  questions  to  which  it  is  impossible 
to  obtain  a  definite  answer  ;  but  I  can  only 
say  that  if  there  is  a  large  number  of  persons 
outside  literary  circles  who  read  the  English 

ii 

classics,  they  keep  very  quiet  about  their 
amiable  hobby.  I  have  sometimes  thought, 
in  moments  of  depression,  that  we  who 
write  get  our  living  solely  by  taking  in  each 
other's  scribblings.  I  am  willing  to  allow 
that  the  state  of  mind  of  a  man  who  can 
read  the  works  of  others  without  wishing 
to  write  himself  is  incomprehensible  to  me, 
and  it  is  possible  that  he  does  not  exist. 

This  doubt  as  to  the  nature  of  the  circle 
that  the  classics  still  enchant  renders  argu- 
ment by  analogy  a  little  difficult  when  we 
come  to  consider  the  work  of  contemporary 
writers  from  the  point  of  view  of  posterity, 


THE  VERDICT  OF  POSTERITY       185 

but  one  or  two  theories  may  safely  be  ad- 
vanced. Work  that  depends  for  its  merit 
rather  on  the  novelty  of  its  theme  and  the 
freshness  of  its  arguments  than  on  the  per- 
fection of  its  expression  is  bound  to  perish 
as  soon  as  the  public  mind  has  assimilated 
the  new  ideas  such  work  puts  forth.  This 
rules  out  at  one  stroke  practically  the  whole 
of  the  work  done  by  the  more  prominent 
writers  of  this  very  didactic  age.  I  cannot 
see,  to  take  a  striking  instance,  what  will 
induce  posterity  to  read  the  plays  of  Mr. 
Bernard  Shaw.  But  a  section  of  our  modern 
drama  may  survive  as  presenting  a  truthful 
picture  of  the  life  of  to-day,  while,  as  in 
the  case  of  "  Gulliver's  Travels,"  the  didactic 
significance  is  overlooked  or  forgotten. 
"Justice,"  to  take  a  very  up-to-date  in- 
stance, may  well  render  such  a  service  to 
posterity  as  the  "  Shoemaker's  Holiday  "  and 
"  Bartholomew  Fair  "  have  rendered  to  us  in 
restoring  the  atmosphere  of  a  vanished  age. 
Again,  I  think  it  is  important  that  the 
artist's  style  should  possess  that  simplicity 
that  appeals  to  all  ages  alike.  It  is  pos- 
sible for  an  intelligent  person  to  read 


186  MONOLOGUES 

Chaucer  without  a  glossary  to-day.  Will  it 
be  possible  for  any  one  to  read  Mr.  Rudyard 
Kipling  with  equal  ease  in  the  year  2200? 
Chaucer,  while  sinning  freely  in  his  passion 
for  gallicisms,  relied  for  the  most  part  on 
simple  words  and  simple  turns  of  speech. 
Mr.  Kipling  has  such  an  affection  for  the 
ephemeral  dialects  of  the  hour  that  his  early 
short  stories  already  betray  their  age.  There 
is  a  danger,  too,  in  the  direct  appeal  to 
sentiment,  for  the  sentiment  of  one  genera- 
tion is  the  sentimentality  of  the  more  sophis- 
ticated generation  that  succeeds  it.  Mr. 
Barrie's  little  Thrums  papers,  that  were  so 
good  when  they  first  appeared,  have  hardly 
escaped  the  effects  of  this  disastrous  meta- 
morphosis. 

Where  are  we  to  find  our  present-day 
writers  of  distinction  who  are  not  didactic, 
who  are  not  sentimental,  and  who  write  clear 
and  expressive  English?  I  have  made  a  list 
of  five,  and  I  think  that  the  reader  must  be 
happily  catholic  if  he  can  make  a  longer 
list  for  himself.  And  if  we  leave  the  realms 
of  literary  art,  it  would,  I  think,  be  even 
harder  to  find  a  number  of  men  likely  to 


THE  VERDICT  OF  POSTERITY      187 

achieve  even  that  transitory  fame  that  man 
grants  grudgingly  to  the  mighty  dead.  I  can 
think  of  two  painters,  but  I  cannot  think 
of  one  politician  who  will  seem  more  than 
a  shadow  to  those  that  come  after.  Per- 
haps, like  the  majority  of  our  countrymen, 
the  age  to  come  will  esteem  professional 
cricket  and  football  above  art,  and  we  may 
not  make  so  bad  a  showing  after  all  !  The 
thought  is  consoling  to  our  national  vanity, 
even  if  we  do  not  go  so  far  as  to  hope 
that  the  possibility  may  be  fulfilled. 


XXII 
IS   ENGLAND   DECADENT? 

WHILE,  on  the  whole,  finding  party  politics 
a  little  insincere,  and  inclined  to  sympathize 
with  the  oblivious  state  of  mind  that  readily 
forgets  General  Elections,  I  think  it  would  be 
rather  a  pity  if  the  message  of  one  election  in 
particular  was  allowed  to  pass  unregarded. 
This  message,  as  our  partisan  newspapers  ac- 
knowledged a  little  ruefully,  was  of  a  wholly 
negative  character.  The  people  of  England 
did  and  did  not  believe  in  the  House  of 
Lords ;  they  liked  and  did  not  like  the 
Budget ;  they  appreciated  and  did  not  ap- 
preciate Free  Trade,  or  Tariff  Reform,  as 
it  is  sometimes  called.  In  a  word,  speaking 
by  means  of  a  record  poll,  the  people  of  Eng- 
land said  nothing  to  which  any  reasonable 
man  could  attach  any  reasonable  meaning. 
Our  professional  politicians  shouted  lustily 

188 


IS  ENGLAND  DECADENT?  189 

into  the  abyss,  and  waited  in  vain  for  the 
sound  of  an  echo.  It  is  only  fair  to  add, 
since  politicians  are  much  maligned,  that 
both  parties  detected  the  inspiriting  voice  of 
victory  in  this  embarrassing  silence  ;  but  in 
face  of  the  irreconcilable  natures  of  their 
respective  claims,  it  seems  juster  to  presume 
that  both  parties  were  defeated,  and  this,  to 
the  discriminating  student  of  men  and  voters, 
seemed  the  most  natural  result  of  the  recent 
election.  It  may  be  true  of  all  elections — it 
was  certainly  true  of  this  one — that  the  man 
in  the  street,  indistinguishable  in  these  demo- 
cratic days  from  the  god  in  the  car,  votes  in 
accordance  with  the  decrees  of  his  own  pre- 
judices, rather  than  from  any  strong  feeling 
on  the  general  issues  of  the  election.  A 
candidate  with  a  queer-sounding  name  loses 
votes,  just  as  a  candidate  who  is  the  son  of 
a  peer  gains  them.  Owing  to  the  varying 
degrees  of  intelligence  possessed  by  voters, 
this  system  of  voting  produces  chaos.  Thus, 
in  the  election  under  notice,  many  men  voted 
for  the  Government  because  the  publicans 
had  raised  the  price  of  whisky,  while  many 
men  voted  for  the  Opposition  for  the  very 


190  MONOLOGUES 

same  reason  !  It  was  unreasonable  to  ex- 
pect a  definite  opinion  of  the  Budget  from 
a  country  thus  distraught ;  nor,  indeed,  did 
we  get  it. 

I  imagine  that  patriotism,  using  the  word 
in  any  but  its  parish -pump  significance^  is 
the  rarest  of  all  human  enthusiasms.  It  de- 
mands the  possession  on  the  part  of  the 
individual  of  two  qualities — altruism  and 
imagination,  which  are  sufficiently  rare  by 
themselves,  but  quite  exceptional  in  partner- 
ship. It  is,  I  think,  fairly  obvious  that  it 
is  in  imagination  that  present-day  English- 
men are  lacking  ;  they  have  not  the  art — to 
use  a  homely  phrase — of  seeing  beyond  their 
noses,  and  they  demand  that  all  their  sacri- 
fices should  be  of  immediate  and  obvious 
benefit  to  their  neighbours.  It  is,  perhaps, 
a  hard  saying,  but  I  am  sure  that  the  mere 
idea  of  making  sacrifices  for  their  country 
strikes  the  average  Englishman  as  savouring 
of  cant.  How  far  this  may  be  due  to  our 
growing  materialism  I  do  not  know.  In 
the  golden  age  of  Elizabeth  England  seems 
to  have  bred  fine  imaginations  with  the 
greatest  ease ;  her  sons  were  not  merely 


IS  ENGLAND  DECADENT?  191 

imaginative  in  word,  but  also  in  deed,  as  the 
stories  of  her  ancient  ports  can  testify.  But 
nowadays  there  is  something  essentially  un- 
English  in  concerning  oneself  with  national 
abstractions  to  the  detriment  of  one's  own 
business.  According  to  the  labels  which  we 
have  elected  to  attach  to  our  individual  pre- 
judices, the  word  patriotism  is  unpleasantly 
suggestive  either  of  Jews,  Mafeking,  and  cheap 
Union  Jacks,  or  of  disloyal  Celts  and  bomb- 
throwing  niggers.  The  invention  of  local 
patriotism — that  rascally  phrase  to  salve  the 
consciences  of  the  unpatriotic — has  proved 
but  a  step  to  the  general  adoption  of  self- 
patriotism.  The  modern  Englishman  is  the 
deafest  and  blindest  kind  of  individualist. 
Any  idea  that  lies  outside  his  own  mental 
environment  strikes  him  as  fanciful  and 
ridiculous.  The  country  in  which  he  lives 
is  inhabited  only  by  his  friends  and  connec- 
tions, and  his  sole  duty  is  to  guard  their 
interests.  Sometimes  he  has  a  snobbish 
esteem  for  the  masters  of  richer  countries 
than  his,  sometimes  he  indulges  in  senti- 
mental pity  for  those  who  starve  at  his 
frontiers — masters  of  no  country  at  all.  But 


192  MONOLOGUES 

normally  he  makes  his  house  not  merely  his 
castle,  but  his  kingdom,  his  empire,  and  his 
ultimate  heaven  as  well.  England  as  an 
ideal  to  be  served  and  cherished  no  longer 
exists  for  him  at  all. 

The  decay  of  the  patriotic  ideal  is  serious 
enough  in  itself,  but  it  becomes  even  more 
significant  if  we  regard  it  merely  as  one 
particular  manifestation  of  a  general  decay. 
The  present-day  Englishman  is  afraid  of  the 
big  thought,  the  big  emotion,  the  big  love. 
The  big  thought  is  pretentious,  the  big  emo- 
tion is  bestial,  the  big  love  is  affected  ;  so, 
with  a  shrinking  phrase  and  a  cackling 
laugh,  he  tries  to  veil  his  coward  soul  from 
anything  too  great  to  be  comfortable  to  its 
infinite  smallness.  Generation  on  generation 
of  unchecked  prosperity  has  robbed  him  of 
humility,  the  virtue  that  is  a  bond  of  fellow- 
ship between  the  nobly  little  and  the  nobly 
great.  He  has  come  to  believe  that  he  has 
not  only  inherited  the  earth  but  created  it, 
or,  at  all  events,  so  far  improved  on  its 
original  design  that  all  the  credit  is  his  by 
right ;  and  he  feels  that  the  criticism  im- 
plied in  the  existence  on  his  earth  of  greater 


IS  ENGLAND  DECADENT?  193 

forces  than  himself  is  irreverent.  Seated  on 
the  throne  that  he  has  raised,  he  is  quite 
satisfied  with  the  odour  of  the  incense  that 
he  himself  has  lighted,  and  the  winds  that 
blow  through  the  temple  doors  and  disturb 
the  calm  ascent  of  the  admiring  smoke  are 
very  distasteful  to  him.  Within  his  breast 
the  anger  of  an  outraged  god  and  the  sorrow 
of  an  interrupted  worshipper  strive  for 
mastery,  which  means  that  he  meets  criti- 
cism with  a  lofty  air  of  unconcern,  not  the 
less  insolent  that  it  is  assumed.  Time  was 
when  the  English  were  the  most  arrogant 
people  in  the  world  because  they  lived  in 
England  ;  to-day  England  is  the  most  arro- 
gant country  in  the  world  because  it  is 
inhabited  by  the  English.  Then  we  were 
proud  of  our  manly  virtues  ;  now  we  are 
proud  of  our  freedom  from  the  manly  vices, 
without  asking  what  that  freedom  signifies. 
It  is  our  pleasure  to  set  an  example  to  the 
civilized  world,  yet  as  a  nation  we  are  not 
united  even  in  sanctimoniousness.  Every 
individual  wishes  to  force  the  majority  to 
accept  his  own  standard  of  bigotry.  We  are, 
however,  more  or  less  agreed  in  condemning 

13 


194  MONOLOGUES 

the  manner  of  life  of  the  other  European 
nations,  and  it  is  not  our  fault  that  they 
regard  us  as  hypocritical  yahoos,  and  hold 
Saint  John  Bull  himself  to  be  no  more  than 
an  inflated  frog,  by  no  means  emancipated 
from  the  ancestral  slime. 

Being  a  journalist,  I  may  be  inclined  to 
attach  too  much  importance  to  the  Press  as 
representing  the  public  mind  of  the  hour  ; 
but  so  far  as  it  is  possible  for  one  man  to 
study  a  nation,  I  am  convinced  that  England 
has  the  Press  it  deserves.  In  itself  this  is 
natural,  for  the  whole  policy  of  present-day 
newspaper  proprietors  is  to  turn  out  a  paper 
that  will  please  its  readers  rather  than  in- 
form or  influence  them.  In  consequence, 
from  the  pert  frivolity  of  Punch  to  the 
Teutonic  and  stodgy  erudition  of  the  Athen- 
ceum,  the  earnest  student  of  periodical 
literature  will  find  that  a  constant  effort  is 
being  made  to  treat  the  abstract  in  terms 
of  the  concrete,  to  measure  the  infinite  from 
a  fixed  and  belittling  point  of  view.  Politics 
are  party  politics,  religion  is  the  clash  of 
rival  creeds,  love  is  a  compromise  between 
the  Divorce  Court  and  the  Agony  column, 


IS   ENGLAND   DECADENT?  195 

death  is  an  obituary  notice  five  letters  long, 
literature  is  bad  journalism,  art  is  bad 
morality,  and,  it  might  be  added,  a  newspaper 
is  an  advertisement  sheet  containing  certain 
other  matters.  It  is  only  necessary  to  com- 
pare this  with  the  view,  for  instance,  held 
by  the  man  in  the  street  on  the  subject  of 
different  nationalities  to  realize  how  exact 
a  judgment  the  newspapers  have  formed  of 
the  popular  mind.  The  French  are  im- 
moral, the  Germans  eat  sausages,  the  Italians 
play  barrel-organs,  the  Japanese  use  fans, 
Spaniards  visit  bull  fights,  and  Russians  are 
anarchists.  Thus  with  one  pregnant  fact  the 
democratic  critic  is  able  to  distinguish 
between  foreigners,  or  aliens,  as  they  are 
called,  if  they  are  unfortunate  enough  to 
have  no  money. 

I  doubt  whether  the  English  were  ever 
broad-minded  as  a  nation  ;  indeed,  the  Eliza- 
bethan comedies  and  the  narratives  of  the 
early  voyagers  breathe  as  full  a  spirit  of 
intolerance  as  the  most  ardent  patriot  could 
desire  ;  but  this  older  intolerance  was  very 
definitely  national — that  is  to  say,  it  repre- 
sented the  prejudices  of  the  nation  rather 


196  MONOLOGUES 

than  those  of  individuals,  and  from  one  point 
of  view  this  spirit  was  to  be  commended. 
But  to-day  we  can  only  judge  the  temper 
of  the  nation  by  striking  an  average  be- 
tween the  loud -mouthed  condemnations  of  a 
thousand  factions.  The  newspapers,  which 
might  help,  are  swayed  hither  and  thither 
by  the  clamour  of  individuals.  When  the 
voice  of  the  nation  is  asked  for  a  judgment 
we  hear  the  babble  of  a  million  tongues. 

I  remember  reading  somewhere  as  a  sign 
of  our  national  decadence  that,  whereas  in 
our  brave  days  we  were  proud  of  being  so 
small  an  island,  we  now  sought  the  favour  of 
the  gods  by  bragging  of  the  immensity  of 
our  Empire,  and  perhaps  the  criticism  con- 
tains a  hint  of  the  causes  of  our  present 
weakness.  That  we  are  strangely  weak  no 
man  who  has  considered  our  attitude  towards 
Germany  can  deny.  While  cultivating  our 
individual  conceit,  we  have  lost  the  happy 
faith  in  ourselves  that  helped  our  forefathers 
to  do  impossible  things.  We  have  no 
national  religion,  no  national  art,  no  national 
songs.  We  have  not  the  power  to  act  nobly, 
so  we  brand  as  fanatics  the  few  who  seek 


IS  ENGLAND   DECADENT?  197 

to  conquer  themselves.  We  have  not  the 
power  to  think  nobly,  so  we  scoff  at  noble 
things.  During  the  last  appeal  in  question  to 
the  nation,  the  whole  of  the  arguments  of  the 
politicians  were  directed  to  individuals,  and 
it  was  as  individuals  that  we  replied. 

England,  it  might  be  said,  no  longer  exists  ; 
we  must  draw  what  consolation  we  may 
from  the  fact  that  it  has  been  conquered 
by  Englishmen. 


XXIII 

UNCOMFORTABLE    SPRING 

SPRING  is  here  again,  and  the  observant  will 
doubtless  have  noticed  shy  almond-blossoms 
gleaming  in  the  front  gardens  of  suburban 
villas  above  the  tufts  of  crocuses.  Now  the 
many-mooded  weeks  begin  to  grant  us 
tremulous  blue  days,  tender  and  soft  as  the 
petal  of  a  flower,  one  here  and  one  there 
in  magnificent  promise  of  the  azure  summer 
that  we  shall  not  get.  The  flower-girls  de- 
light the  streets  with  fragrant  heralds  from 
the  Channel  Islands  ;  tailors  talk  glibly  of 
the  new  spring  patterns  that  are  exactly  like 
the  old  ;  women  feel  a  strange  longing  to 
impale  the  dead  bodies  of  new  birds  with 
their  hat-pins  in  honour  of  the  season  ;  the 
democracy  cleans  its  bicycle  and  schemes 
improbable  holidays  ;  and  the  hibernation 


198 


UNCOMFORTABLE  SPRING  199 

of  county   cricketers  draws   to   its  welcome 
close. 

There  is  a  general  tendency  on  the  part 
of  writers,  and  possibly  of  most  individuals, 
to  describe  spring  as  being  a  very  joyous 
season  for  poor  humanity.  Doubtless  it  was 
joyous  enough  in  primitive  days,  when  we 
lived  in  caves  and  went  to  Nature  direct  for 
our  table  d'hote  ;  but  in  a  state  of  civiliza- 
tion we  are  unwilling  to  be  reminded  of  the 
primitive  element  in  our  natures.  As  far  as 
possible  we  have  abolished  the  seasons.  The 
long  nights  that  must  have  been  singularly 
monotonous  to  our  hairy  ancestors  are  no 
more  ;  indeed,  for  the  privilege  of  living  a 
few  hours  by  artificial  light  we  spend  an 
appreciable  fraction  of  the  daylight  in  bed. 
We  skate  in  summer  and  eat  strawberries 
in  winter.  We  have  flowers  all  the  year 
round,  and  we  do  not  associate  the  break- 
ing of  the  buds  on  the  trees  with  warmth 
and  over-eating.  Even  the  traditional  custom 
of  making  love  in  the  spring  is,  I  fancy — pace 
Tennyson — going  out  of  fashion.  Spring, 
the  birth  of  the  new  green  year,  has  lost 
its  old  significance  of  good  times  come  again. 


200  MONOLOGUES 

Children  are  often,  oddly,  more  civilized 
than  grown-up  people,  and  it  is  they  who 
show  the  greatest  resentment  of  the  perturb- 
ing effects  of  spring,  so  that  at  this  season 
of  the  year  the  wise  ruler  of  children  does 
not  fail  to  lay  in  a  supply  of  tonics,  those 
nauseating  compounds  that  are  supposed  to 
reconcile  young  people  with  life.  But  though 
adult  grievances  against  Nature's  recurrent 
frivolity  are  not  so  easily  cured,  they  are 
by  no  means  less  genuine.  It  may  be  that 
during  the  long  winter  months  we  have  cut 
and  polished  our  latest  philosophy  of  life 
to  a  fine  perfection,  yet  a  careless  spray  of 
almond-blossom  and  a  wind  like  good  Bur- 
gundy will  undo  our  work  in  a  trice,  and 
all  is  to  be  done  again.  It  seems  as  though 
a  man  may  by  no  means  contrive  to  pass 
peaceably  from  his  cradle  to  his  grave  borne 
on  the  placid  wings  of  a  fixed  idea.  The 
spring  has  a  rough  way  with  our  philoso- 
phies, though  a  civilized  man  without  a 
philosophy  is  a  forlorn  and  disillusioned 
creature,  painful  to  the  eyes  of  the  cultured 
elect.  To  the  convenient  dogmas  of  civi- 
lization the  spring  affixes  an  impudent  note 


UNCOMFORTABLE  SPRING          201 

of  interrogation  ;  it  wakes  strange  doubts  of 
authority  in  our  minds  in  the  spirit  of  the 
schoolboy  whose  idle  fingers  elongate  the 
nose  of  his  schoolmaster,  caricatured  on  his 
blotting  paper.  We  begin  to  feel  rebellious 
against  the  conventional  virtues  that  have 
been  as  iron  laws  through  the  winter.  We 
question  work  and  obedience  and  sobriety. 
Our  eyes,  rigid  moralists  at  other  seasons, 
detect  the  shapely  angles  of  women  with  a 
certain  glee.  We  strut  a  little  in  our  walks 
abroad,  and  clutch  eagerly  at  feather-brained 
excuses  for  neglecting  our  business.  Our 
quickened  blood  reproaches  all  our  decent 
rules  of  life  as  so  many  spoilers  of  sport. 
We  dream  as  far  as  our  lack  of  practice 
in  that  exercise  will  permit  us.  The  wind 
which  blows  across  the  mountains  has  made 
us  mad. 

And  yet  we  are  not  happy  at  this  time 
of  year,  and  the  reason  is  by  no  means 
difficult  to  discover.  During  the  calmer 
months  we  are  content  to  live  the  life  that 
civilization  demands  of  us,  ignoring  the  mis- 
chievous suggestions  of  our  emotions  and 
even  of  our  intellects.  But  when  April 


202  MONOLOGUES 

comes,  and,  encouraging  us  to  doubt  the 
wisdom  of  our  voluntary  fetters,  deprives 
us  of  that  solemn  vanity  which  guards 
us  normally  from  the  consequences  of  our 
humanity,  we  are  like  rudderless  ships  cast 
haphazard  on  to  the  disordered  sea  of  life. 
In  December  we  can  look  at  pretty  girls  with 
a  proper  reticence  of  eye  and  thought,  for 
we  know  that  the  moralities  of  our  neigh- 
bours are  all  about  us ;  but  in  April  or 
May  we  do  not  care  a  primrose  for  our 
neighbours  or  their  moralities.  Our  eyes 
sparkle,  our  lips  taste  the  breath  of  life,  our 
feet  tap  tunes  on  the  pavement,  and  in  our 
hearts  we  say,  "  Good  heavens  !  how  pretty 
the  girls  are  this  year  !  " 

This  would  be  well  enough  in  its  way,  if 
we  were  accustomed  to  dealing  with  such 
braggart  and  swashbuckler  thoughts  and 
knew  how  to  keep  them  under  a  generous 
but  firm  control.  But  in  the  placid  seasons 
of  the  year  that  civilization  has  made  its 
own  we  do  not  think  at  all,  since  wise  men 
have  thought  for  us  already,  and  we  only 
permit  ourselves  such  emotions  as  the  ex- 
perience of  others  has  shown  us  to  be  safe. 


UNCOMFORTABLE  SPRING          203 

Rebel  spring  will  have  none  of  our  cautious 
conventions,  and  his  foaming  splendours  act 
on  our  minds  like  strong  ale  on  the  guarded 
bodies  of  total  abstainers.  We  are  all  poets 
in  the  spring,  but,  unlike  those  who  dwell 
all  the  year  round  on  the  slopes  of  Olympus, 
we  do  not  know  where  we  are.  We  call 
our  mother  Nature  "  ma  "  with  the  unblush- 
ing confidence  of  commercial  travellers,  and 
are  genuinely  puzzled  when  she  scratches  our 
faces  in  a  tempest  of  indignation.  Even  the 
narcissus,  according  to  certain  scientists,  can 
give  us  influenza,  or,  at  the  least,  hay-fever, 
and  in  our  new-found  enthusiasm  for  emo- 
tional adventure  we  shall  be  lucky  if  we 
escape  so  lightly.  What  will  they  say  in 
Hampstead  if  we  take  to  reading  the  Yellow 
Book  because  the  daffodil  has  more  courage 
than  our  sister  the  swallow? 

I  suppose  it  was  my  subconscious  realiza- 
tion of  the  perils  of  spring  that  led  me 
recently  to  fly  to  the  friendly  shelter  of  those 
Surrey  pine-woods  that  won  me  as  a  child, 
and  hold  the  better  part  of  me  captive  still. 
The  man  who  has  never  made  friends  with 
a  pine-forest  does  not  know  what  a  forest 


204  MONOLOGUES 

can  be.  My  own  especial  woods  have  the 
moving  dignity  of  a  vast  cathedral  ;  the  cool 
dimness  of  untrodden  aisles  stretching 
between  tapering  columns,  while  here  and 
there,  as  it  were  through  stained  glass,  a 
brittle  sunbeam  falls  to  break  into  a  thousand 
glittering  fragments  on  the  smooth  rough- 
ness of  the  pine-needles.  The  birds  are  the 
best  of  choristers,  while  numberless  insects 
droning  in  the  heather  of  the  clearings  imi- 
tate closely  enough  the  devout  murmur  of  a 
distant  congregation. 

Moreover,  to  help  my  peace,  there  are  no 
creatures  of  the  female  sex  in  these  far  soli- 
tudes, save  for  a  few  small  pinafored  atoms 
who  gather  fuel  in  silence,  suffering  the 
majesty  of  the  pines  to  hush  the  shrill 
loquacity  of  their  youth.  In  a  world  of 
feminine  changeableness  it  is  an  agreeable 
quality  in  pine -woods  to  be  very  much  the 
same  at  any  season  of  the  year.  They  as- 
sume no  sordid  poverty  in  winter,  no  arro- 
gant hopefulness  in  spring.  An  oak-forest 
has  a  thousand  moods  to  perplex  the  heart 
of  man  ;  the  pines  have  but  one  mood,  and 
that  a  mood  of  noble  and  enviable  serenity. 


UNCOMFORTABLE   SPRING  205 

"  I  never  get  between  the  pines  but  I  smell 
the  Sussex  air,"  sang  Mr.  Hilaire  Belloc 
before  Westminster  took  him  wholly,  and  in 
the  same  way  the  pines  speak  eloquently  to 
me  of  that  fairest  part  of  England  where 
Surrey  meets  Hampshire.  Black  Lake, 
Waverley,  Sandy  Lane,  Lower  Bourne — the 
very  names  are  like  songs  to  me.  There  is 
an  inn  that  some  of  my  readers  may  know 
that  has  a  name  like  a  poem  and  draught- 
beer  like  an  anthology,  and  the  "  Pride  of 
the  Valley,"  with  its  proprietary  fish -pools 
and  its  maternal  solicitude  for  the  welfare 
of  the  "  Devil's  Jumps,"  is  all  that  the  most 
ambitious  valley  could  desire. 

But  all  this  is,  perhaps,  a  little  remote 
from  the  spring,  save  that  I  hold  that  that 
man  is  wise  who  realizes  the  dangers  of  this 
ring-time  season  and  betakes  himself  to  some 
quiet  place  where  he  can  contemplate  the 
face  of  Nature  melting  into  her  new  laughters 
without  fear  of  being  compromised  by  that 
element  of  primitive  man  that  still  sur- 
vives within  him,  and  is  apt  to  give  such 
violent  manifestations  of  its  existence  when 
the  buds  are  breaking  on  the  trees.  This 


206  MONOLOGUES 

is  the  season  when  stockbrokers  marry  their 
typewriting  girls  and  the  younger  sons  of 
hereditary  legislators  go  every  night  to  the 
Gaiety  Theatre,  with  a  Saturday  matinee 
thrown  in.  This  is  the  season,  or  so  the 
novels  tell  me,  when  grey-haired  editors  pinch 
the  cheeks  of  their  beautiful  poetesses,  and 
when  the  poor  young  man,  who  has  loved 
us  faithfully  all  the  winter,  proves  to  be  the 
Duke  of  Southminster,  the  richest  and  most 
interesting  of  all  the  backwood  peers.  To 
the  foolish,  romantic  incident  of  this  char- 
acter may  seem  harmless  or  even  desirable  ; 
but  to  the  majority  that  has  realized  the 
soundness  of  the  lines  on  which  civilization 
has  decreed  that  the  world  should  run, 
spring,  with  its  eccentricities,  must  remain 
an  inconvenient  and  distressing  season. 


XXIV 

THE    PHILOSOPHY    OF    GAMBLING 

THERE  is  a  season  of  the  year  when  even 
the  most  steady-going  of  men  and  women 
are  incited  by  the  winds  of  spring  to  take 
an  interest  in  the  affairs  of  the  Turf,  even  to 
the  extent  of  hazarding  pieces  of  gold  on 
the  behaviour  of  horses  of  which  they  have 
not  previously  heard.  This  being  so,  it  is 
hardly  astonishing  that  a  poet  should,  for 
once  in  a  way,  write  a  sporting  article, 
though  I  have  no  intention  of  discussing  the 
chances  of  the  horses  entered  for  the  Derby, 
beyond  remarking  that  Tressady  is  a  pret- 
tier name  than  Lemberg  or  Neil  Gow.  It 
is  the  sportsmen  rather  than  the  horses  that 
interest  me,  and  when  a  race  is  over  I  always 
look  round  to  see  how  losers  are  taking  their 
losses.  When  an  Englishman  meets  with 

207 


208  MONOLOGUES 

disaster  he  does  not  swear  or  weep  or  de- 
pose his  fetishes.  He  adapts  his  face  to  a 
mark  of  unconcern,  and  fixes  his  eyes  on 
eternity,  lest  any  human  being  should  detect 
the  un-English  upheaval  within.  England, 
of  all  nations,  is  the  nation  of  gamblers,  but 
it  knows  how  to  lose  almost  better  than  it 
knows  how  to  win. 

Yet  in  this  passion  for  taking  risks,  and 
even  more  perhaps  in  this  stoicism  in  face 
of  defeat,  it  is  easy  to  trace  one  of  the 
principal  causes  of  our  extraordinary  success 
as  a  nation.  It  must  have  occurred  to  every 
one  who  has  studied  the  voyages  of  the  Eng- 
lish seamen  in  the  pages  of  Hakluyt  and 
Purchas  that  few  of  these  expeditions  could 
be  described  as  sound  commercial  trans- 
actions ;  and,  ignoring  this  trait  of  the  Eng- 
lish character,  one  would  be  compelled  to 
wonder,  not  that  Englishmen  should  be  pre- 
pared to  risk  their  lives  on  such  enchanting 
ventures,  but  that  staid  London  merchants 
should  be  willing  to  finance  them.  Some- 
times these  little  ships  brought  back  diaries 
of  strange  adventure  written  in  naive  and 
charming  English  ;  sometimes  they  did  not 


THE   PHILOSOPHY  OF  GAMBLING    209 

come  back  at  all ;  but  rarely,  I  fancy,  can 
they  have  brought  much  treasure  in  gold  and 
spices  to  the  imaginative  capitalists  who 
equipped  them.  Yet  the  game  went  on,  and 
while  the  adventurous  vessels  cruised  happily 
in  unknown  seas,  the  merchants  who  owned 
them  dreamed  over  their  musty  ledgers. 
They  would  have  diamonds  and  rubies 
enough  when  their  ships  came  home.  There 
is  something  significant  in  the  pleasant 
English  phrase. 

I  suppose  it  seems  a  far  cry  from  the 
sea-washed  Indies  to  pastoral  Epsom  Downs, 
from  the  gentlemen  adventurers  of  Elizabeth 
to  those  other  gentlemen  who  will  lose 
their  money  with  a  calm  brow  on  Derby 
Day.  And  yet  I  think  it  is  only  another 
instance  of  the  way  in  which  civilization 
preserves  our  primitive  passions  while 
changing  our  manner  of  expressing  these 
passions.  I  am  not  sure  there  is  any 
deterioration ;  it  is  only  our  lack  of  im- 
agination that  makes  the  present  seem  so 
sordid.  We  know  that  those  little  ships  were 
badly  provisioned  and  utterly  dirty.  We 
know  that  their  crews  frequently  mutinied, 

14 


210  MONOLOGUES 

and  that  the  officers  quarrelled  among  them- 
selves and  cheated  their  employers.  They 
would  murder  natives  on  the  smallest  provo- 
cation ;  probably  they  did  not  wash,  Against 
these  things  you  may  set  an  almost  animal 
courage  and  a  not  unimaginative  patriotism 
that  permitted  them  to  steal  and  murder  with 
a  good  heart.  A  modern  racecourse  crowd, 
considered  in  bulk,  will  be  found  to  share 
these  attributes.  It  is  dirty,  ill -provisioned, 
quarrelsome,  and  dishonest.  But,  as  last 
Derby  Day  proved,  it  is  the  most  loyal  crowd 
in  the  world,  and  it  would  be  idle  to  deny 
it  the  courage  of  the  gambler.  The  race- 
course mob  has  another  quality  that  it 
would  be  unjust  to  ignore ;  it  is  insanely 
generous. 

I  have  an  ancestor,  so  runs  the  dearest 
of  my  family  traditions,  who  was  hanged  as 
a  pirate  by  the  Spaniards  at  Port  Royal. 
How  much  of  that  priceless  piratical  blood 
the  centuries  may  have  transmitted  to  me 
I  do  not  know,  but  if  I  were  his  very  rein- 
carnation I  could  hardly  hoist  the  Jolly 
Roger  in  an  age  that  may  believe  in  fairies, 
but  certainly  does  not  believe  in  pirates.  A 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GAMBLING    211 

modern  Captain  Flint  would  be  driven  oil 
the  high  seas  by  the  journalists.  They  would 
count  his  pistols,  and  measure  his  black  flag, 
and  publish  interviews  with  his  school- 
fellows. It  would  be  impossible  for  him  to 
maintain  the  correct  atmosphere  of  mys- 
terious cruelty  when  Tiny  Tots  had  given 
its  little  readers  a  photograph  of  his  pet 
rabbit.  Besides,  he  could  make  a  better 
living  on  the  "halls."  This  being  so,  I  must 
needs  find  another  outlet  for  my  fraction  of 
my  ancestor's  adventurous  spirit,  and  I  find 
it,  not  unworthily  I  hope,  in  the  occasional 
backing  of  outsiders. 

There  is  much  to  be  said  for  this  kind 
of  adventure.  In  the  first  place,  it  enables 
you  to  back  your  fancy  on  the  only  sound 
system  of  betting  on  horses  with  agreeable 
names.  Others  may  burden  their  minds  with 
tedious  histories  of  pedigrees  and  previous 
runnings  ;  you  are  at  liberty  to  let  your  eyes 
roam  over  the  card  in  search  of  pleasant 
gatherings  of  vowels  and  consonants.  Some- 
times mischance  will  lead  you  to  select  a 
horse,  the  cramped  price  of  which  suggests 
that  it  may  possibly  win,  but  there  is  no 


212  MONOLOGUES 

need  to  be  disheartened.  You  have  only  to 
choose  again.  Nor,  in  the  long  run,  is  there 
any  risk  of  success  turning  these  idyllic 
speculations  into  commercial  transactions. 
Now  and  again,  perhaps,  the  heavens  will 
fall,  and  your  ship  will  come  home  laden 
with  gold  and  silk  and  ruddy  wine.  But  on 
the  whole  your  ledgers,  if  you  keep  them, 
will  tell  a  long  tale  of  wrecks  and  drowned 
men  and  uncanny  swift  disasters,  amply 
compensated  for,  however,  by  the  thrills  that 
are  the  true  rewards  of  the  adventurous. 
Bookmakers,  too,  are  very  pleasant  to  you 
if  you  bet  on  this  principle.  When  I  made 
my  investment  on  the  last  Derby  at  a  delight- 
ful price  the  bookmaker  turned  to  me  with 
a  charming  smile.  "  I  hope  I  shall  have  the 
pleasure  of  paying  you  !  "  he  said.  I  fear 
backers  of  favourites  rarely  receive  such 
courtesy. 

It  is  a  fact  that  if  you  are  not  a  Carnegie 
or  a  Rockefeller  an  occasional  bet  provides 
an  admirable  foundation  for  the  building  of 
dream-palaces.  "  When  I  back  a  winner  " 
is  a  phrase  that  leads  up  pleasantly  to  the 
spending  of  a  deal  of  fairy  gold,  and  the 


THE   PHILOSOPHY  OF  GAMBLING    213 

best  of  this  kind  of  shopping  is  that  if  you 
are  expert  at  it  the  possession  of  the  real 
gold  that  is  so  hard  to  win  becomes  in  a 
sense  unnecessary.  If  you  purchase  a  thing 
a  hundred  times  in  dreams  and  then  find 
that  you  still  really  desire  it  your  imagina- 
tion wants  looking  to.  But  I  really  do  not 
know  how  the  Nonconformists  can  call  bet- 
ting sordid.  I  hold  no  brief  for  the  facial 
beauty  of  bookmakers,  nor  do  I  find  grand 
stands  the  last  word  in  architecture ;  but 
when  a  man  makes  a  bet  he  is  simply  seek- 
ing for  something  that  he  thinks  necessary 
to  complete  his  life.  It  may  be  beer,  or  it 
may  be  diamonds  to  deck  an  actress's  leg, 
but  in  either  case  it  represents  an  ideal,  a 
human  aspiration,  and  as  such  is  not  to  be 
despised.  If  betting,  which  after  all  is  the 
simplest,  if  the  least  reliable,  way  of  trying 
to  make  money,  is  sordid,  then  must  all  ways 
of  making  money  be  sordid.  But,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  few  people  bet  as  a  means  of  pro- 
curing necessaries.  Whenever  I  see  any  one 
putting  money  on  a  horse  I  see  a  man, 
gambling  it  may  be,  but,  nevertheless,  striv- 
ing ever  for  beauty  as  he  conceives  it.  When 


214  MONOLOGUES 

I  see  a  man  earning  his  living  I  see  a  trucu- 
lent stomach. 

And  now,  as  this  is  a  real  sporting  article, 
I  will  end  with  a  story  of  the  Turf.  At 
one  of  the  smaller  meetings  there  was 
entered  in  a  selling-plate  a  horse  called 
Pegasus,  of  which  even  the  most  cunning 
tout  knew  nothing  whatever.  As  the  handi- 
cappers  were  equally  ignorant,  they  gave  it 
the  welter  weight  of  ten  stone,  and  hoped 
for  the  best.  When  the  market  opened  on 
the  race  the  horse  travelled  badly  ;  in  fact, 
nobody  would  put  a  penny  on  Pegasus,  and 
fifties  were  vainly  proffered  after  the  experts 
had  examined  the  sorry  screw,  and  the 
extraordinary  person  who,  calling  himself  the 
owner,  proposed  to  ride  it.  The  denouement 
you  will  probably  have  foreseen.  When  the 
tapes  flew  up  Pegasus  unfolded  a  gorgeous 
pair  of  amethystine  wings  and  fluttered  coolly 
down  the  course  to  win  by  a  distance.  You 
can  imagine  the  gaping  crowd,  the  horror 
of  the  s.p.  offices,  the  joy  of  the  poet  and 
his  friends.  But  the  sequel  is  strange.  At 
the  subsequent  auction  a  Jew  bought  Pegasus 
for  fifty  thousand  guineas  after  brisk  com- 


215 

petition.  The  race  fund  prospered  and  the 
owner  of  the  second,  but  Pegasus  never  flew 
another  yard. 

And  the  Jew  is  a  sad  man,  because  the 
poet  will  not  tell  him  what  dope  he  used. 


XXV 

THE    POET.    WHO    WAS 

THERE  are  some  illusions  which  no  man  who 
has  formed  a  high  conception  of  life  will 
readily  allow  to  die.  We  cling  to  them 
because  we  realize  that  there  is  a  wisdom 
that  lies  beyond  the  truth  as  we  can  see 
it — a  wisdom  that  holds  itself  aloof  from  our 
timid  doubts  and  reasonings.  Of  these  im- 
mortal illusions  there  is  one  that  is  of 
special  value  to  the  artist ;  he  must  believe, 
however  often  circumstances  appear  to  give 
him  the  lie,  that  great  work  can  only  be 
done  by  great  men.  The  first  work  of  every 
creative  artist  is  to  create  his  own  character, 
and  if  he  fails  here  through  weakness  or 
carelessness,  that  failure  will  be  expressed 
and  emphasized  in  his  artistic  work.  So  if 
admiring  grapes  we  find  ourselves  confronted 
with  the  bramble  that  has  produced  them, 

216 


THE  POET  WHO  WAS  217 

we  must  form  one  of  two  conclusions — either 
the  grapes  are  not  true  grapes,  but  Dead 
Sea  fruit,  bloom  without  and  ashes  within, 
or  we  lack  the  sympathetic  insight  that 
would  enable  us  to  detect  the  authentic  vine 
in  the  heart  of  a  briar. 

Years  ago  there  appeared  a  volume  of 
poems  for  which  I  have  ever  had  a  great 
admiration,  and,  holding  this  illusion  beyond 
all  others,  I  always  wished  to  meet  the  man 
who  wrote  them.  He  was,  I  knew,  engaged 
in  work  that  could  hardly  be  grateful  to  a 
poet,  and  he  was  not  to  be  encountered  in 
ordinary  literary  circles  ;  still,  whenever  I 
read  his  book  I  felt  sure  that  sooner  or  later 
I  should  meet  this  man  and  like  him.  His 
poetry  appealed  to  my  more  individual  emo- 
tions, expressing  moods  with  which  I  was 
personally  familiar.  Meanwhile,  till  I  might 
know  him  better,  I  contented  myself  with 
writing  in  praise  of  his  poems  whenever  I 
had  the  opportunity. 

Then  one  day  I  found  a  distinguished  man 
of  letters  and  the  most  enthusiastic  of  Eng- 
lish editors  sitting  together  in  a  Regent  Street 
cafe.  We  fell  to  talking  of  the  man  and  his 


218  MONOLOGUES 

poems.  -We  all  admired  his  work,  and, 
therefore,  we  all  wished  to  meet  him.  "It's 
easy  enough,"  cried  the  man  of  letters, 
"  and  after  all  we  know  the  man  through  his 
book.  We'll  write  him  a  mutual  invitation 
to-night,  and  take  him  out  to  lunch  to- 
morrow." There  was  something  gallant  in 
the  idea,  for  we  risked  being  snubbed,  which 
is  the  last  adventure  an  Englishman  cares 
to  have.  We  wrote  the  letter  and  sent 
it  off. 

The  next  morning  was  one  of  those  rare 
and  splendid  days  of  which  only  England 
seems  to  have  the  secret — days  when  the 
wind  is  sweet  and  cool  like  a  russet  apple, 
and  the  warm  sunshine  follows  close  at  its 
heels  before  one  has  time  to  be  chilled.  It 
seemed  a  good  day  on  which  to  make  a 
new  friend.  We  called  for  our  poet,  and 
received  a  message  that  he  would  be  pleased 
to  come  with  us  in  an  hour's  time  ;  so  we 
went  into  Regent's  Park  and  watched  the 
squirrels  playing  with  the  nursemaids,  and 
thrusting  their  inquisitive  noses  into  the 
flowing  hair  of  little  girls.  We  felt  that  it 
was  a  generous  world  that  gave  us  sunshine 


THE  POET  WHO  WAS  219 

and  little  squirrels  and  men  who  wrote  'fine 
songs. 

It  is  perhaps  foolish  to  expect  men  of 
talent  to  be  either  very  handsome  or  very 
ugly,  but  I  confess  that  I  was  disappointed 
with  my  first  impression  of  the  poet.  He 
looked  elderly  and  insignificant  and  sug- 
gested in  some  subtle  way  an  undertaker's 
mute,  the  kind  of  man  who  wears  black  kid- 
gloves  too  long  in  the  fingers,  and  generally 
has  a  cold  in  the  head.  I  thought,  however, 
that  his  eyes  might  be  rather  fine  in  repose, 
but  the  whole  body  and  speech  of  the  man 
were  twittering  with  nervousness,  and  he 
affected  me  like  an  actor  in  a  cinematograph 
picture.  All  Nature  is  the  friend  of  the  shy 
man,  and  behind  this  superficial  unease  we 
divined  qualities  of  enthusiasm  and  ami- 
ability that  would  no  doubt  be  patent  when 
this  overwhelming  timidity  had  passed  away. 

Looking  back,  it  seems  to  me  that  we  all 
worked  rather  hard  to  set  the  man  at  his 
ease  and  find  him  worthy  of  his  own  work. 
We  told  him  stories,  we  found  mutual  friends, 
we  encouraged  him  to  talk,  we  sympathized 
with  him  over  his  luckless  environment,  and 


220  MONOLOGUES 

when  called  upon  we  praised  and  quoted- his 
poetry  without  stint ;  but  still  he  fluttered 
like  a  bird  caught  in  a  snare.  He  took  his 
food  without  enjoyment,  the  sunny  wine  of 
France  did  not  warm  him  a  degree.  We 
piped  to  him  his  own  tunes,  all  the  tunes 
of  the  world,  and  yet  he  would  not  dance. 
It  was  not  that  he  was  embarrassed  by  our 
compliments  ;  he  took  them  for  his  due,  as 
a  poet  should.  But  he  seemed  to  think  that 
our  enthusiasm  must  have  a  sinister  motive, 
that  it  was  impossible  that  any  one  should 
have  discrimination  enough  to  wish  to  meet 
the  author  of  his  book  for  the  book's  sake. 
Nevertheless,  being  optimists  in  matters  of 
art,  our  faith  in  the  man  held  true  ;  if  only 
we  could  persuade  him  to  drop  the  mask 

of  his  nervousness  we  thought 

At  the  end  of  lunch  we  succeeded,  and 
then  I  think  we  were  all  sorry.  He  stood 
there  leaning  gently  against  the  table,  while 
soured  vanity  spoke  with  a  stammering 
tongue.  It  seemed  that  our  little  limcheon- 
party  was  a  conspiracy  to  persuade  him  to 
publish  some  of  his  poems  in  the  editor's 
paper,  and  therefore  he  found  it  necessary 


THE  POET  WHO  WAS  221 

to  be  rude.  Had  his  suspicions  been  true, 
a  more  modest  man  might  have  thought  such 
a  plot  pardonable,  or  even  rather  flattering. 
But  the  terms  in  which  our  poet  expressed 
himself  placed  him  beyond  argument  or 
sympathy.  We  shook  hands  and  said  good- 
bye, and  he  went  away  out  of  our  world 
of  sunshine  and  tame  squirrels  for  ever 
and  ever. 

So  far  as  my  companions  were  concerned 
the  matter  ended  there.  Their  kingdoms 
were  secure,  and  they  could  afford  to  laugh 
at  our  honourable  discomfiture.  But  my 
kingdom  was  yet  to  win,  and  I  could  not 
spare  the  smallest  of  my  illusions.  If  such 
a  man  as  I  had  met  that  day  could  do  the 
big  things,  Art  became  of  a  sudden  an  un- 
worthy mistress  to  serve.  I  went  home  and 
nervously  took  his  book  from  the  shelf, 
wondering  how  far  my  new  knowledge  of 
the  man's  personality  would  spoil  my  enjoy- 
ment of  his  work.  I  need  not  have  been 
anxious  ;  they  were  real  grapes,  though  per- 
haps I  acknowledged  for  the  first  time  that 
their  distinctive  bitter  flavour  prevented  them 
from  being  of  the  first  quality.  Still,  they 


222  MONOLOGUES 

were  admirable  of  their  kind,  and  I  had  to 
satisfy  myself  how  such  fruit  could  have 
grown  on  such  a  vine. 

And  then  with  a  flash  of  intuition  I  saw 
the  truth.  The  flesh,  the  features,  the  mortal 
part  of  the  man  might  survive,  but  I  knew 
as  surely  as  if  I  had  been  present  at  his 
death -bed  that  the  youth  who  had  written 
those  poems  was  dead.  Needless  to  wonder 
what  thwarting  of  emotion,  what  starvation 
of  appetite,  had  produced  that  burst  of  song  ; 
the  important  thing  to  me  was  to  realize 
that  the  man  himself,  as  we  reckon  men  in 
the  hopeful  world,  had  perished  in  the  sing- 
ing. With  this  knowledge  to  aid  me,  I  could 
sympathize  with  the  rudeness  of  the  man  we 
had  sought  to  honour.  For  in  his  heart  he 
knew  himself  little  better  than  a  changeling, 
and  with  the  giant's  robe  of  his  splendid 
hour  of  youth  hanging  loosely  about  his 
shrunken  bones,  he  must  have  found  our 
enthusiasm  no  more  than  mockery. 

I  have  not  yet  been  fortunate  enough  to 
meet  the  author  of  that  book  of  poems  which 
I  have  admired  so  long,  yet  I  feel  sure  that 
sooner  or  later  I  shall  meet  the  man  and 


THE   POET   WHO   WAS  223 

like  him.  I  know  that  he  will  be  young, 
and  I  think  that  on  his  lips  his  songs  will 
have  lost  their  bitterness  ;  for  it  is  a  hard 
thing  if  we  must  carry  our  concern  for  the 
roses  and  our  sorrow  for  the  spring-tide 
lightness  of  girls  beyond  the  gateway  of  the 
grave. 


XXVI 

THE    GIFT    OF    APPRECIATION 

IT  is  hardly  necessary  to  remind  readers 
that  Carlyle,  the  Scotchman  who  wrote  a 
fine  romance  about  the  French  Revolution 
but  generally  preferred  to  write  in  broken 
German,  once  devoted  a  book  to  the  con- 
sideration of  Heroes  and  Hero -Worshippers. 
These  words  are  set  on  paper  a  long  way 
from  that  and  most  other  books,  and  I  can- 
not recall  for  the  moment  the  exact  attitude 
he  adopted  towards  hero -worshippers— 
whether  he  pitied  them,  patronized  them,  or 
admired  them.  As  he  was 'himself  undoubtedly 
a  hero  one  would  expect  his  emotions  to 
vary  between  compassion  and  admiration 
— the  strong  man's  compassion  for  the  weak- 
ness and  admiration  of  the  strength  of  the 
weak.  I  am  sure  at  all  events  that  he  did 
not  fall  into  the  vulgar  error  of  despising 

224 


THE   GIFT  OF  APPRECIATION       225 

hero -worshippers  because  they  are  content 
not  to  be  heroes.  Yet  as  I  write  it  seems 
to  me  that  the  very  name  "hero -wor- 
shipper "  has  been  spoilt  by  sneering  lips  ; 
we  are  asked  to  believe  that  they  are  only 
weak-minded  enthusiasts  with  a  turn  for  un- 
discriminating  praise,  and  that  they  swallow 
their  heroes,  as  a  snake  swallows  a  rabbit, 
bones  and  all. 

Personally  I  think  this  is  a  bad  way  in 
which  to  eat  rabbits,  but  the  best  possible 
way  in  which  to  take  a  great  man.  I  detest 
the  cheese-paring  enthusiasm  that  accepts  the 
Olympian  head  and  rejects  the  feet  of  human 
clay.  Until  Frank  Harris  taught  me  better 
I  thought  Shakespeare's  Sonnets  were  capable 
of  but  one  probable  interpretation  ;  but  I 
did  not  wag  my  head  with  the  moralist 
Browning  and  cry,  "The  less  Shakespeare 
he ! "  To-day  I  do  not  find  Shakespeare 
less  great  because  he  loved  Mary  Fitton  ;  it 
seems  impossible  that  any  one  should.  Yet 
Moore  burnt  Byron's  autobiography,  Ruskin 
would  not  write  a  Life  of  Turner  because 
of  the  nature  of  his  relationship  with  women, 
Stevenson  abandoned  an  essay  on  Hazlitt 

15 


226  MONOLOGUES 

because  of  the  "  Liber  Amoris  "  —Stevenson, 
whose  essay  on  Robert  Burns  "  swells  to 
heaven  "  !  In  the  face  of  such  spectacles  as 
these  it  is  surely  legitimate  to  pine  for  the 
blind  generosity  of  the  enthusiast,  that  in- 
cautious fullness  of  appreciation  that  lifts 
great  men  with  their  due  complement  of  vices 
and  follies  on  to  a  higher  plane  where  the 
ordinary  conventions  of  human  conduct  no 
longer  apply. 

Great  men  are  usually  credited  with  an 
enormous  confidence  in  their  own  ability,  but 
often  enough  they  have  been  distinguished 
for  their  modesty,  and  the  arrogance  has  only 
come  late  in  life  to  support  their  failing 
powers  of  creation.  In  fact,  it  may  be  said 
that  no  man,  even  the  most  conceited,  is 
assured  of  his  own  heroic  qualities  till  some 
one  tells  him  of  them,  and  thus  far  it  would 
seem  that  the  hero -worshipper  creates  the 
hero.  One  enthusiast  can  create  many 
heroes,  which  possibly  accounts  for  the  fact 
that  we  find  in  life  that  heroes  are  far  more 
numerous  than  hero -worshippers.  Nearly 
every  one  possesses  the  heroic  qualities  in 
posse;  the  gift  of  appreciation  is  proper- 


THE   GIFT   OF   APPRECIATION       227 

tionately  rare.  Every  day  there  are  more 
great  men  and  fewer  admirers  of  greatness 
in  man.  In  the  next  generation  super-men 
will  be  so  common  that  it  will  become  a 
distinction  to  belong  to  Christ's  democracy. 
The  standard  example  of  hero-worship  is 
Boswell's  "  Life  of  Johnson,"  a  book  whose 
greatness  is  universally  admitted,  and,  it  may 
be  added,  universally  misconstrued.  If  we 
are  to  class  biographies  by  their  utility,  it 
loses  its  pre-eminence,  for  we  would  have 
derived  a  considerable  if  insufficient  know- 
ledge of  Johnson  from  the  pages  of  Piozzi, 
Hawkins,  and  others  ;  whereas  if  that  match- 
less prig  Austen  Leigh  had  not  written  the 
Life  of  his  aunt  Jane  Austen,  we  should  have 
known  practically  nothing  of  the  inspired 
miniature  painter,  less  certainly  than  we  know 
of  Shakespeare.-  But,  of  course,  the  great- 
ness of  Boswell's  Johnson  rests  with  Boswell, 
and  not  with  Johnson  at  all.  Johnson  had 
all  the  traditional  virtues  and  vices  of  the 
mythical  average  Englishman.  He  was 
brave,  honest,  obstinate,  intolerant,  and  ill- 
mannered  ;  he  was  all  these  things  with  a 
violence  to  shake  society,  as  his  vast  body 


228  MONOLOGUES 

shook  the  floors  of  houses.  It  is  this  violence 
that  marks  him  out  as  an  exceptional  man, 
for  violence  of  any  kind  is  abnormal,  but 
it  is  safe  to  say  that  for  one  Boswell  there 
will  be  born  a  hundred  Johnsons.  In  terms 
of  literature  Johnson  is  only  of  interest  as 
being  the  protagonist  of  Boswell's  master- 
piece. If  his  "  Lives  of  the  Poets  "  still  exist 
to  irritate  the  unwary,  "  Irene "  and 
"  Rasselas  "  are  dead  and  buried.  For  all 
his  greatness  Johnson  had  not  the  wit  to 
win  for  himself  his  measure  of  immortality. 
It  needs  the  magic  of  Boswell's  pen  to  put 
life  into  his  dead  bones.  He  displays  his 
hand  in  many  parts — as  a  learned  pig,  as  a 
sulky  child,  as  Falstaff,  and,  happily  enough, 
often  as  a  simple,  kind-hearted  man  ;  but, 
whatever  the  role,  Boswell  never  forgets  to 
impress  us  with  the  fact  that  this  is  a  man 
to  be  admired.  He  shows  us  Johnson  bellow- 
ing at  the  thought  of  death  ;  he  tells  us  that 
he  was  a  brave  man,  and  we  believe  him. 

Johnson  apart,  Boswell's  Life  is  a  master- 
piece of  self -revelation  ;  he  is  so  honest  as 
an  artist  that  he  makes  no  effort  to  hide  the 
petty  dishonesties  of  his  own  nature.  He 


THE   GIFT  OF  APPRECIATION       229 

tells  us  how  he  won  the  tolerance  of  John- 
son and,  indeed,  made  himself  necessary  to 
him  by  means  of  skilful  flattery.  This  sig- 
nifies but  little,  for  Shakespeare  did  not 
scruple  to  flatter  Elizabeth  and  Pembroke, 
the  greater  folk  of  the  moment.  We  are 
most  of  us  willing  to  flatter  great  men  if 
it  gives  them  pleasure,  but,  unlike  Boswell, 
we  do  not  subsequently  explain  the  process 
at  full  length  in  a  book.  It  reminds  us  of 
Pepys  taking  careful  note  of  his  peccadilloes, 
but  Pepys  did  not  always  remember  that  he 
intended  posterity  to  read  his  diary.  Bos- 
well  wrote  without  thought  of  concealment, 
handed  his  portrait  of  Johnson  and  his  no 
less  conscious  portrait  of  himself  to  his  own 
generation,  and  ever  since  has  been  regarded 
as  a  kind  of  thick-headed  parasite  for  his 
pains.  Boswell  was  not  an  intellectual  man 
in  the  sense  that  Johnson  was  intellectual, 
but  he  had  a  wonderful  knowledge  of  human 
motives  and  an  appreciation  of  Johnson  that 
brought  out  the  latent  genius  in  him,  and 
ended  by  making  the  expression  of  his 
admiration  more  admirable  than  the  man 
admired.  Johnson  is  as  dead  as  Garrick. 


230  MONOLOGUES 

Boswell  lives  with  the  great  ones  of  English 
literature.  The  hero -worshipper  has  outlived 
the  hero. 

As  a  rule  it  is  to  be  feared  that  apprecia- 
tion is  a  gift  granted  only  to  the  young.  In 
our  green,  unknowing  days  we  used  to  divide 
books  into  masterpieces  and  miserable  rub- 
bish. The  classification  is  convenient,  but 
as  our  minds  wear  out  and  we  become  wise, 
the  tendency  is  to  find  no  more  masterpieces. 

Those  were  great  nights  when  we  used 
to  read  each  other's  verses  and  congratulate 
the  world  on  its  possession  of  our  united 
genius.  That  is  really  the  poet's  hour,  his 
rich  reward  for  years  of  unprofitable  labour, 
when  the  poets  of  his  own  unripe  age  receive 
his  work  with  enthusiasm — an  enthusiasm 
which  in  all  honesty  and  all  modesty  he 
shares  himself.  Unhappily  he  is  paid  in 
advance  ;  sooner  or  later  he  wakes  to  find 
that  he  is  worshipping  before  the  shrine  of 
his  own  genius,  and  the  shrine  is  empty. 
That  is  why  I  am  half  pleased  and  half 
melancholy  when  young  men  tell  me  that 
Antony  Starbright,  aged  twenty,  is  the 
greatest  poet  since  Keats.  If  they  only  knew 


THE   GIFT  OF  APPRECIATION      231 

that  I  too  in  my  hour  was  one  of  a  group 
of  greatest  poets  who  all  wrote  poems  to 
Pan  and  Hylas,  when  on  summer  nights  that 
sometimes  stretched  far  into  summer  morn- 
ings we  were  all  hero -worshippers  together 
and  we  ourselves  were  the  heroes. 

There  is  a  box  at  the  Strand  end  of 
Waterloo  Bridge  which  is  always  brimful  of 
the  works  of  new  poets,  and  I  can  never  pass 
it  without  pausing  to  look  at  the  little  neatly - 
bound  volumes  which  say  so  little  and  mean 
so  much.  All  the  enthusiasms,  all  the  illu- 
sions of  youth  are  there,  printed  with  broad 
margins  and  bound  in  imitation  vellum.  I 
turn  the  pages  that  brutal-  critics  have  not 
troubled  to  cut,  and  bitterly  lament  the  blind- 
ness that  makes  it  impossible  for  me  to  know 
what  the  young  men  who  wrote  them  really 
wanted  to  say.  But  it  pleases  me  to  think 
that  each  of  those  little  books  has  its  appre- 
ciative public,  some  half-dozen  young  men 
who  know  the  author  and  can  read  the 
greatness  and  pride  of  his  youth  between 
the  reticent  lines  of  his  work. 


XXVII 
POETS    AND    CRITICS 

WHEN  a  short  time  ago  I  came  across  a  book 
by  the  Poet  Laureate,  entitled  "  The  Brid- 
ling of  Pegasus,"  I  confess  that  the  title 
alarmed  me.  I  do  not  want  the  present 
century  to  capture  the  winged  horse.  I 
should  be  sorry  to  see  poor  Pegasus  munch- 
ing gilded  oats  at  a  banquet  of  the  Poetry 
Society,  nor  do  I  wish  to  find  his  photograph 
among  the  grinning  actresses  in  the  illus- 
trated papers.  But  an  examination  of  Mr. 
Austin's  book  soon  reassured  me.  He  has 
not  bridled  Pegasus.  He  has  not  even  suc- 
ceeded in  harnessing  Rosinante,  but  by  a 
natural  error  he  has  hung  his  bridle  on  to 
a  spotted  wooden  steed  of  great  age,  that 
served  perhaps  to  amuse  some  of  our  less 
considerable  poets  in  their  infancy.  Mr. 
Austin's  criticism  is  as  individual  as  his 

232 


POETS   AND   CRITICS  233 

poetry,  and  far  more  stimulating.  I  do  not 
think  that  any  poet  could  read  "  The  Brid- 
ling of  Pegasus "  without  being  roused  to 
passionate  anger.  It  is  as  though  a  village 
schoolmaster  had  paid  a  week-end  visit  to 
the  foot  of  Parnassus,  and  had  embodied  his 
miscomprehensions  of  what  he  had  seen  in 
the  form  of  a  series  of  lectures  to  his  apple- 
cheeked  pupils.  Here  you  have  the  con- 
descension, the  assertive  ignorance,  the  oc- 
casional smirking  humour.  Let  the  little 
boys  write  on  their  slates  Mr.  Austin's  asser- 
tion that  Byron  is  the  greatest  English  poet 
since  Milton,  and  let  them  add  that  Mr. 
Austin  is  the  most  irritating  critic  since 
Remus.  One  of  these  statements  is  true. 

It  is  too  late  in  the  day  to  review  "  The 
Bridling  of  Pegasus,"  but  it  suggests  the  fit- 
ness of  some  inquiry  into  the  relationship 
between  poets  and  critics.  It  is  of  course  as 
natural  for  critics  to  dislike  the  work  of 
young  and  adventurous  poets  as  it  is  for 
poets  to  dislike  the  writings  of  aged  and 
sophisticated  critics,  for  critics — of  all  men 
who  work  in  words — love  to  support  them- 
selves on  those  mysterious  crutches  known 


234  MONOLOGUES 

as  canons  of  art,  which  any  new  poet 
worthy  of  the  name  promptly  sends  flying 
with  a  spirt  of  his  winged  foot.  This  is 
not  to  say  that  canons  of  art  (the  artillery 
of  the  small  bore?)  may  not  have  a  certain 
value — for  critics  ;  but  poets,  when  they  fall 
to  criticizing  their  comrades,  are  usually  con- 
tent to  rely  on  their  individual  judgments 
rather  than  to  appeal  to  any  universal  theory 
of  greatness  in  poetry,  and,  considered  dis- 
passionately, it  would  be  easy  to  support  the 
view  that  critics  select  their  canons  of  art 
to  justify  the  preferences  that  they  formed 
when  their  minds  were  still  receptive  and 
unhardened  by  the  inhuman  task  of  criti- 
cism. To  take  a  handful  of  poets  at  random, 
it  seems  impossible  to  lay  down  any  one 
theory  of  poetry  that  will  support  the  un- 
deniable greatness  of  Herrick,  Burns,  Blake, 
Keats,  Browning,  Swinburne,  and  Meredith, 
and  it  may  be  noted  that  the  Laureate — 
who  writes  as  a  critic  and  not  as  a  poet — 
while  treating  of  poetry  from  the  academic 
standpoint,  does  not  dare  this  ultimate  ad- 
venture. He  is  content  to  arrange  poetry 
in  classes,  and  assure  us  that  reflective 


POETS  AND  CRITICS  235 

poetry  is  greater  than  lyrical,  and  that  epic 
poetry  is  the  greatest  of  all. 

Even  if  we  are  to  accept  these  dogmatic 
assertions,  I  can  imagine  no  sane  reader  of 
poetry  regulating  his  preferences  by  doctrine 
of  this  kind.  To  Mr.  Austin  the  comparative 
popularity  of  lyrical  poetry  is  a  matter  for 
keen  regret.  To  me — so  far  does  personal 
prejudice  count  in  these  matters — it  is  a 
healthy  sign,  since  it  suggests  that  those  who 
read  poetry  to-day  do  so  for  pleasure  rather 
than  from  a  sense  of  duty.  But  if  for  no 
other  reason,  I  would  mistrust  Mr.  Austin's 
canons  on  account  of  the  extraordinary  con- 
clusions to  which  they  lead  him.  Probably 
most  foreigners  would  agree  with  Mr.  Austin 
that  Byron  is  the  greatest  English  poet  since 
Milton  ;  but  poetry  is  the  one  possession  that 
a  nation  cannot  share  with  its  fellows,  and 
the  countrymen  of  Keats  and  Shelley,  of 
Browning  and  Swinburne,  must  perforce 
keep  the  enjoyment  of  their  rarer  inheritance 
to  themselves. 

Nor  do  his  canons  help  Mr.  Austin  to  fare 
better  on  smaller  points.  Thus  when  he 
wrote  that  "  no  poet  of  much  account  is  ever 


236  MONOLOGUES 

obscure  "  he  had  clearly  forgotten  Browning, 
Blake,  and  the  Shakespeare  of  the  Sonnets. 

The  Sonnets  are  occasionally  obscure 
because  in  them  Shakespeare  is  expressing 
very  intricate  and  subtle  emotions,  quite 
beyond  the  range  of  ordinary  lovers. 
Browning  is  obscure  because  his  mind  was 
an  overcrowded  museum  in  which  his 
thoughts  could  not  turn  round  without  knock- 
ing freakish  ornaments  and  exotic  images 
off  the  shelves.  Blake  was  obscure,  as 
Wordsworth  was  often  inane,  through  trust- 
ing too  much  to  inspiration.  Great  poetry 
is  not  obscure  ;  but  the  ranks  of  the  great 
poets  supply  exceptions  to  all  generalizations. 

Again,  Mr.  Austin  finds  it  strange  that  two 
such  great  poets  as  Dante  and  Milton  should 
suffer  from  a  total  lack  of  humour.  This 
opens  up  a  fruitful  field  of  speculation,  but 
probably  this  deficiency  is  the  rule  rather 
than  the  exception.  Coleridge,  Wordsworth, 
Keats,  Shelley,  Blake,  Tennyson,  and  Swin- 
burne all  lacked  it,  though  some  of  these 
poets  tried  to  be  funny  at  times.  Browning 
had  a  sense  of  humour,  but  it  may  be 
doubted  whether  it  did  his  poetry  any  good. 


POETS   AND   CRITICS  237 

Shakespeare  had  enough  humour  for  fifty 
men  of  letters  ;  but  he  had  everything.  Mr. 
Alfred  Austin  has  not  a  sense  of  humour, 
though  he  sometimes  indulges  a  cumbrous 
spirit  of  gaiety  that  recalls  Mr.  Pecksniff  in 
his  moments  of  relaxation. 

No,  I  do  not  believe  in  canons  of  art,  save, 
if  you  will,  of  a  vague  and  ineffective  char- 
acter that  leave  artists  free  to  do  what  they 
like.  Nevertheless,  the  school  of  criticism 
to  which  Mr.  Austin  belongs  being  powerful 
these  days,  I  think  it  would  be  a  goodly 
task  to  prepare  a  list  of  aphorisms  to  hang 
by  the  bedside  of  critics  of  poetry.  Mine 
would  be  something  like  this  :— 

1.  A  good  critic  is  a  man  who  likes  good 
work,  and  by  dint  of  his  enthusiasm  is  em- 
powered to   perform   miracles,  teaching  the 
blind  to  see  and  the  deaf  to  hear. 

2.  There   are  two   kinds   of   poetry,  good 
and   bad.     Minor   poetry   is   a  phrase  used 
by  incompetent  critics  who  dare  not  oppose 
their  judgment  to  the  possible  contradiction 
of  posterity. 

3.  "To  artists  who  can  treat  them  greatly 
all   times   and   all  truths   are   equal A 


238  MONOLOGUES 

poet  of  the  first  order  raises  all  subjects  to  the 
first  rank"  (Swinburne). 

4.  If  the  poet's  intellect  gives  power  and 
direction  to  his  work,  his  emotions  supply 
the  force  that  creates  it.    With  most  men  the 
emotions  become  exhausted  or  sophisticated 
at  a  comparatively  early  age.     Hence  most 
poets  have  done  their  best  work  when  they 
were  young. 

5.  The  aphorism  that  poets  are  born  and 
not  made  is  merely  an  untruthful  expression 
of  the  fact  that  not  every  one  can  become 
a  poet  by  taking  pains.     It  would  hardly  be 
excessive  to  say  that  the  first  task  of  every 
artist  is  to  create  his  own  genius  ;   it  is  our 
misfortune  that  most  artists  have  neglected 
to  do  this. 

6.  Poets  who  try  to  teach  in  song  have 
derived  small  benefit  from  their  suffering. 

7.  We  have  all  endured  the  man  who  sings 
because    he    must ;    there    is    something    to 
be  said  for  the  man  who  sings  because  he 
can. 

8.  The  wise  critic  will   always  approach 
poetry  on  his  knees,  even  though  he  ends  by 
sitting  on  it. 


POETS  AND  CRITICS  239 

9.  Bad  poetry  is  not  nearly  so  harmful 
as  bad  criticism  of  poetry. 

And  so  on.  ...  It  would  be  possible  to 
fill  a  number  of  pages  with  such  things, 
without  saving  one  critic  from  the  quench- 
less flames.  The  only  sane  method  by  which 
to  become  a  good  critic  of  poetry  is  to  love 
poetry.  That  is  why  Professor  Saintsbury's 
"  History  of  English  Prosody  "  seems  to  me 
to  be  a  great  book.  I  think  he  has  the  most 
catholic  appreciation  of  poetry  that  any  man, 
not  excluding  the  poets  themselves,  can  ever 
have  achieved,  and  he  is  free  from  the  poet's 
inevitable  prejudices.  The  first  volume  may 
be  skimmed  over  advantageously  by  any  one 
not  specially  interested  in  prosody  as  a 
science  ;  but  the  second  and  third  volumes 
should  be  read  and  re-read  by  all  lovers  of 
English  poetry.  Such  a  critic  may  well 
reconcile  poets  to  criticism. 

And  this  brings  me  to  the  vexed  question 
of  the  utility  of  critics.  It  seems  to  me  clear 
that  critics  can  be  of  little  service  to  men 
of  genius  or  even  to  artists  of  real  ability, 
but  as  middlemen  between  artists  and  the 
general  public  they  are,  unhappily,  neces- 


210  MONOLOGUES 

sary.  1 1  is  often  forgotten  how  far  the  read- 
ing public  to-day  is  dependent  on  the  critics 
to  tell  it  how  many  of  the  monstrous  multi- 
tude of  new  books  are  worth  reading.  Poetry 
is  very  badly  treated  by  the  Press  in  general 
because  there  is  no  money  in  it,  and  the 
daily  newspapers  prefer  to  devote  their 
literary  columns  to  reviews  of  novels  written 
in  batches  of  six  by  elderly  unmarried  ladies 
between  breakfast  and  lunch.  But  it  must 
be  added  that  the  bulk  of  the  criticism  of 
new  poetry  that  does  appear  in  the  periodical 
Press  is  surprisingly  well  done.  The  only 
pity  is  that  there  is  not  more  of  it. 


XXVIII 
MONTJOIE 

MO'NTJOIE  lies  in  a  deep  valley  of  the  moun- 
tainous district  known  as  the  Eifel.  The 
little  town  is  built  on  a  bend  of  the  river 
Roer,  which  is  really  one  long  waterfall 
from  one  end  to  the  other,  and  is  always 
turning  in  its  bed  as  if  it  were  looking  for 
a  hairpin.  Like  all  mountain  streams,  it 
becomes  a  raging  torrent  in  winter -time 
after  a  thaw,  which  perhaps  accounts  for  my 
impression  that  half  the  houses  in  the  town 
are  falling  into  it  and  that  the  other  half 
are  climbing  out  with  glistening  walls  and 
waterweed  in  the  crannies  of  their  roofs. 
Wherever  the  townsfolk  go  in  the  valley  they 
hear  the  breathless  song  of  their  river  ;  it 
rings  in  the  ears  of  new-born  babes,  it  calls 
after  the  dying  through  the  closing  gates. 
On  Sunday  nights,  when  the  young  men 

16  241 


242  MONOLOGUES 

have  come  home  from  the  factories  at  Aix 
to  meet  their  girls,  who  work  in  the  silk- 
factories  at  Montjoie,  the  river  absorbs  the 
sound  of  their  mirth,  and,  since  it  is  a 
merry  river,  its  voice  is  unchanged. 

These  silk-factories  are  the  last  word  in 
a  commonplace  industrial  story.  At  one  time 
Montjoie  was  famous—  "  throughout  Europe," 
says  the  guide-book — for  the  manufacture  of 
cloth,  and  the  town  displays  many  fine  old 
houses  where  the  manufacturers  lived  in  the 
years  of  their  pride.  For  over  two  hundred 
years  Montjoie  flourished,  and  within  the 
narrow  limits  of  the  valley  ground  became 
so  scarce  that  the  townsfolk  built  elaborate 
walls  to  make  little  terraces  on  the  precipi- 
tous hills,  where  they  might  grow  their  cab- 
bages. But  the  railway  came  too  late  to 
Montjoie,  and  the  competition  of  manufac- 
tories more  happily  situated  killed  the  cloth 
trade,  and  for  a  while  at  least  the  kitchen - 
gardens  on  the  mountain  side  must  have  been 
unnecessary.  Now  Montjoie  has  recovered 
a  little  of  its  old  prosperity,  the  girls  making 
silk  and  the  boys  working  all  the  week  at 
Aix  ;  but  the  fact  remains  that  in  fifty  years 


MONTJOIE  243 

the  population  has  fallen  from  three  thousand 
to  seventeen  hundred.  The  silk  manufac- 
turers have  bought  the  old  factories  and  left 
them  idle  to  forestall  possible  competition. 
It  is  to  this  decline  in  its  prosperity  that 
Montjoie  owes  much  of  its  picturesqueness, 
for  during  the  last  hundred  years  it  has  not 
been  worth  anybody's  while  to  build  new 
houses,  and  the  little  town  has  crossed  a 
century  of  vile  architecture  unscathed.  I 
have  never  been  in  any  town  that  felt  so 
old  as  this,  even  though  it  is  lit  by  gas  and 
devout  persons  have  built  a  hideous  little 
chapel  on  one  of  the  hills  above  it.  Its 
narrow  streets,  paved  with  cobbles,  and  its 
half-timbered  houses  projecting  over  the 
footway,  carved  sometimes  with  pious  ob- 
servations in  Latin,  and  approached  by  sag- 
ging steps  adorned  with  elaborately-wrought 
hand-rails,  create  an  atmosphere  of  matter- 
of-fact  unromantic  antiquity  which  is  far 
more  impressive  than  the  glamour  with 
which  artists  endow  their  conceptions  of 
the  past.  In  the  June  sunlight  there  was 
nothing  mysterious  about  Montjoie  ;  it  rather 
convinced  me  that  possibly  the  Middle  Ages 


244  MONOLOGUES 

are  not  an  invention  of  the  historians.  By 
day  the  young  people  were  all  at  work  and 
the  streets  were  given  up  to  centenarians  and 
kittens,  who  would  have  looked  very  much 
the  same  a  few  hundred  years  ago  as  they 
did  then,  so  that  it  was  easy  to  give  a  hand- 
ful of  centuries  back  to  Time  and  to  play 
at  being  my  own  ancestor.  In  half  an  hour 
I  had  forgotten  wireless  telegraphy,  the 
phonograph,  googly  bowling,  and  all  our 
valuable  modern  inventions,  and  was  able 
to  walk  through  the  streets  with  only  a 
casual  eye  for  the  queerness  of  the  archi- 
tecture. 

But  when  night  falls  Montjoie  is  full  of 
ghosts  and  shapes  of  the  dead. 

To  revert  to  the  houses,  they  first  opened 
my  eyes  to  the  possible  poetry  of  slates,  and 
conquered  my  normal  English  aesthetic  pre- 
judice in  favour  of  tiles.  Between  the  wide 
chimneys  the  slates  are  spread  like  butter 
on  a  new  loaf,  in  ambitious  and  tumultuous 
waves.  They  are  local  slates  of  a  delicate 
colour,  so  that  from  the  hills  Montjoie  re- 
sembles a  colony  of  brooding  doves,  and  it 
is  easy  to  fancy  that  if  one  threw  a  stone 


MONTJOIE  245 

into  their  midst  the  sky  would  be  darkened 
by  flapping  wings,  and  the  valley  would  be 
left  untenanted  and  desolate.  But  it  is 
guarded  by  two  ruined  castles,  one  the  mere 
shell  of  a  watch-tower,  the  other  a  beau- 
tiful and  imposing  ruin  that  will  be  a  desir- 
able residence  for  any  reincarnated  seigneur 
by  the  time  the  State  has  finished  spending 
money  on  its  restoration.  In  chivalrous  days 
this  castle  was  besieged  no  less  than  six 
times,  but  now  the  hills  are  only  garrisoned 
by  enormous  slugs.  The  black  ones  are 
longer  than  the  brown  ones,  but  they  are 
not  so  fat ;  the  black  slugs  are  like  silk 
umbrella  tassels,  the  brown  ones  are  like 
dates. 

More  interesting  to  me  than  the  conven- 
tional ruins  of  castles  was  a  large  disused 
cloth  factory,  for,  while  it  is  natural  that  a 
castle  should  be  ruined,  a  factory  in  decay 
disturbs  our  trust  in  the  permanence  of  our 
own  inventions.  It  was  so  large  that  the 
little  boys  had  become  tired  of  breaking  the 
window-panes,  and  many  of  them  were  still 
intact ;  but  through  the  gaps  it  was  possible 
to  see  the  looms  standing  idle  under  their 


246  MONOLOGUES 

coverlet  of  dust,  the  engines  grown  hectic 
in  the  damp  mists  of  the  river,  and  the 
whitewash  peeling  from  the  walls  in  soapy 
flakes.  On  these  walls  the  workgirls  had 
written  their  names  and  the  names  of  their 
lovers,  and  I  wondered  how  many  tragic 
separations  there  must  have  been  when  cloth 
no  longer  paid  in  Montjoie,  and  half  the 
inhabitants  went  elsewhere  in  search  of 
work.  Unhappily  I  discovered  this  signifi- 
cant sepulchre  in  the  company  of  a  man  who 
was  labouring  an  aesthetic  theory  that  it  was 
necessary  to  have  visited  Nuremberg  in  order 
to  understand  Wagner,  and  disturbed  my 
sentimental  speculations  with  idle  babblings 
on  music  and  architecture.  I  told  him  that 
Wagner  would  have  been  far  more  interested 
in  the  cloth  factory  than  in  Nuremberg,  and 
that  a  man  who  could  look  at  it  unmoved 
was  capable  only  of  imitative  artistic  emo- 
tions, which,  of  course,  is  true  of  most  men. 
But  I  made  no  convert,  even  though  I 
pointed  out  to  him  the  oil-cans  still  stand- 
ing where  the  engineers  had  put  them  down 
for  the  last  time,  and  the  nails  where  the 
girls  had  hung  their  coats  in  winter.  There 


MONTJOIE  247 

are  moments  when  I  hate  cathedrals  and 
fine  pictures,  because  they  make  men 
blind. 

One  evening  I  went  up  to  the  factory  alone 
to  look  for  ghosts.  The  cows  were  being 
driven  down  from  the  hills  with  a  pleasant 
noise  of  bells,  and  the  river  was  singing 
huskily,  as  though  the  mist  had  given  it  a 
sore  throat.  As  the  darkness  came  on  I 
would  not  have  been  surprised  if  the  deserted 
buildings  had  throbbed  into  spectral  life, 
spinning  cloth  of  dreams  for  the  markets 
of  dead  cities.  But  they  held  mournfully 
aloof  from  me  and  the  world,  like  a  Spanish 
grandee  wrapped  in  a  threadbare  coat,  until 
a  little  old  woman  came  out  of  one  of  the 
outbuildings  and  told  me  a  story  in  a  sad 
voice.  She  had  worked  there  as  a  young 
girl,  and  when  the  smash  came  those  who 
lived  on  the  premises  were  allowed  to  stay 
there  rent-free  ;  but  they  had  all  gone  one 
by  one,  and  now  she  was  alone  in  the  midst 
of  the  great  buildings  that  had  filled  her  life 
since  she  was  twelve  years  old.  It  was  hard 
to  believe  that  she  was  not  one  of  the  ghosts 
whom  I  had  been  seeking,  and  I  returned 


248  MONOLOGUES 

to  the  town  feeling  as  though  I  had  nearly 
guessed  its  secret. 

Montjoie  is  in  Germany,  an  hour  and  a 
half  by  train  from  Aix  la  Chapelle  and 
within  a  day's  walk  of  the  Belgian  frontier. 
I  descended  a  precipice  one  fine  evening  of 
June  in  the  company  of  a  mad  Belgian 
architect,  and  found  it  waiting  for  me  at 
the  foot.  It  had  waited  a  thousand  years, 
and  it  will  still  lie  expectant  of  the  man 
who  shall  make  it  his  own  when  the  hand 
that  writes  these  words  is  fast  once  more, 
after  so  brief  a  period  of  freedom,  in  fetters 
of  incorruptible  dust.  The  works  of  man 
last  longer  than  man  himself,  though  it  be 
but  a  little  longer.  And  if  these  old  houses 
tell  us  only  that  our  forefathers,  like  our- 
selves, built  shelters  wherein  they  could  love 
secure  from  the  gusty  winds  and  the  cold 
of  the  world,  we  are  yet  aware  of  a  shy 
conviction  that  these  greying  and  furrowed 
stones  possess  some  deeper  significance  that 
eludes  our  judgment,  made  hasty  by  the  few- 
ness of  our  years.  "  If  these  ruins  could 

speak "   the  guide-book  says  regretfully, 

when    all    men   know   that   they   are   never 


MONTJOIE  249 

silent,  though  we  cannot  linger  with  them 
to  hear  their  message.  If  the  past  would 
cease  to  trouble  our  hearts  with  its  sweet 
and  poignant  mutterings,  we  might  succeed 
in  mastering  the  present,  in  overcoming  the 
reticence  of  the  days  to  come.  I  climbed 
down  into  Montjoie  on  a  fair  evening  of 
June,  and  after  a  fortnight — a  fortnight  as 
short  as  a  sunny  hour — I  climbed  out  of  it 
back  into  a  restless  and  unfinished  world  ; 
and  so  it  might  be  thought  I  had  finished 
with  Montjoie  and  Montjoie  had  finished  with 
me.  At  one  time  this  might  have  been  true  ; 
but  now  I  know  that  I  am  the  slave  of  my 
dead  hours  and  shall  escape  from  my  servi- 
tude no  more.  Like  all  men,  I  am  a 
thousand  men,  and  one  man  of  me  wanders 
still  in  those  steep,  uneven  streets,  looking 
at  the  faces  of  the  houses,  and  waiting  for 
the  hour  when  they  shall  disclose  their 
secret.  Once  in  a  dream  I  found  Time 
sitting  in  a  garden,  and  with  a  dreamer's 
courage  I  raised  his  shaggy  eyebrows  to  peer 
into  his  eyes.  They  were  as  gentle  and 
kind  as  a  dog's.  Perhaps  the  magic  charm 
of  old  houses  preserves  the  love  and  com- 


250  MONOLOGUES 

radeship  of  the  men  and  women  who  have 
lived  in  them.  Perhaps  when  my  spirit 
wanders  by  night  in  Montjoie  it  is  cleansed 
and  quickened  by  the  fellowship  of  the  im- 
mortal dead. 


XXIX 

A   SUMMER    HOLIDAY 

DAY  after  day  for  thirty  days  the  sun  shone 
on  the  windless  and  perspiring  city,  the  city 
that  had  complained  so  often  of  the  cool,  grey 
tent  of  clouds  that  had  screened  it  from  the 
heat  of  summer.  Night  after  night  for 
thirty  nights  the  city  lay  in  breathless  torpor, 
while  the  feet  of  men  who  could  not  sleep 
echoed  dully  on  the  softening  pavements,  and 
the  air  was  troubled  with  the  sound  of 
children  crying  in  their  dreams.  The  aged 
and  the  sick  loosed  their  listless  fingers  and 
let  life  pass,  and  when  he  looked  from  his 
window  the  artist  saw  their  dusty  hearses 
creeping  along  the  burning  street. 

In  those  days  he  was  afflicted  with  a 
lethargy  of  mind  and  body  against  which, 
in  moments  of  consciousness,  his  creative 
instinct  struggled  in  vain.  He  would  sit 

251 


252  MONOLOGUES 

for  hours  in  front  of  a  white  sheet  of 
paper  and  at  the  end  would  start  up  to 
realize  that  in  all  his  mental  wanderings 
he  had  not  shaped  one  coherent  thought. 
He  would  lie  in  bed  hour  after  hour  in  a 
kind  of  dreamless  stupor,  and  sometimes 
when  he  had  at  last  made  up  his  mind 
to  get  up,  the  sky  darkened  while  he 
was  dressing  and  he  knew  that  the  day 
was  over.  On  these  occasions  it  gave  him 
an  odd  sensation  to  stand  at  the  window 
in  his  pyjamas  and  peep  through  the  Vene- 
tian blinds  at  the  men  and  women  going 
home  from  their  work.  It  reminded  him 
of  the  sunny  days  of  his  childhood,  when, 
having  been  sent  to  lie  down  for  an  hour 
in  the  afternoon,  he  would  lift  the  blind 
stealthily  to  look  out  at  the  busy  world 
with  blinking  eyes.  The  recollection  made 
him  sad,  and  he  would  stare  at  the 
crumpled  bed-clothes  in  disgust  of  his  age. 
It  seemed  as  though  the  years  had  soiled 
him  in  their  passing. 

At  this  time  it  was  as  if  his  mind  had  lost 
the  power  of  creation  ;  it  exhausted  itself 
in  the  labour  of  thinking  while  he  was 


A  SUMMER  HOLIDAY  253 

dimly  conscious  that  he  was  not  thinking 
of  anything  at  all.  He  achieved  extreme 
misery  as  a  condition  of  being  and  not 
as  the  result  of  any  mental  process.  His 
senses  became  dulled  and  untrustworthy. 
He  went  for  moody  walks  without  real- 
izing any  of  the  scents  or  sounds  of  the 
streets,  and  when  he  touched  his  body 
with  his  hands  it  was  so  insentient  that 
he  would  dig  his  nails  in  to  make  sure 
that  it  was  not  dead.  This  numbness 
of  his  intellect  and  his  senses  seemed  to 
make  a  break,  or  at  least  a  weak  link, 
in  the  continuity  of  his  existence.  When 
he  closed  his  eyes  to  examine  his  con- 
sciousness he  was  aware  of  immense  voids 
where  normally  he  would  have  found  pulsing 
blood  and  eloquent  nerves.  From  being 
a  man  with  rather  more  than  his  share 
of  the  wine  of  life,  he  became  a  sluggish 
automaton,  but  vaguely  mournful  for  lost 
treasures  and  present  discomforts.  Now 
and  again,  however,  he  would  realize  that 
he  was  doing  no  work,  and,  before  he 
relapsed  into  his  age-long  torpor,  would 
weary  his  barren  mind  with  efforts  at 


254  MONOLOGUES 

creation.  Afterwards,  looking  back  at  his 
life  with  its  hundred  thousand  follies,  he 
knew  that  these  only  were  lost  days. 

The  thirty -first  day  came  and  still  there 
was  no  rain,  so  the  artist  abandoned  his 
work  and  fled  to  the  sea.  As  he  sat  in 
the  train  he  saw  that  the  fields  were 
scorched  brown  by  the  sun  and  the  trees 
were  losing  their  withered  leaves ;  but 
London  was  already  very  far  away.  Once 
the  train  ran  past  a  burning  heath  and 
the  carriage  was  filled  with  the  acrid 
scent  of  a  November  bonfire.  He  saw 
children  beating  at  the  edges  of  the  fire 
with  uprooted  bushes,  and  a  pall  of  smoke 
borne  up  on  the  heavy  air.  But  the 
train  ran  on  and  brought  him  to  the  sea. 

Like  most  men  who  work  for  love,  he 
had  never  thought  of  taking  a  holiday 
since  he  had  been  his  own  master  ;  wher- 
ever he  had  gone  in  the  world  his  work 
had  gone  with  him,  and  the  emotions  bred 
of  his  resolution  to  do  nothing  for  a 
month  were  new  to  him.  Freed  from 
its  concern  with  words  and  phrases,  his 
mind  saw  life  in  greater  detail  and  he 


A  SUMMER  HOLIDAY  255 

was  curiously  conscious  of  the  shapes  and 
colours  of  things.  He  had  chosen  a 
sophisticated  little  watering-place  on  the 
Belgian  coast  for  his  holiday,  where,  side 
by  side  with  the  row  of  tall  hotels  that 
stood  like  a  great  wall  against  the  sea, 
the  sand-dunes  upheld  the  blue  sky  with 
their  crests  of  pale  gold  like  the  hair  of 
Flemish  fisher-girls.  The  lemon -coloured 
beach  was  inlaid  with  bathing-machines  of 
a  hundred  hues,  and  below  the  dunes  the 
great  black  fishing-boats  lay  high  and  dry 
on  the  sands,  the  pennants  of  their  weather- 
cocks fluttering  softly  in  the  wind  that  blew 
from  the  sea.  The  shore  wras  studded 
with  the  figures  of  men  and  women,  and 
the  children  were  trampling  down  the  surf 
with  their  brown  feet.  Other  children  were 
flying  kites,  and  the  air  was  full  of  strange 
birds  that  plucked  impatiently  at  the  cord 
that  bound  them  to  earth,  and,  when  they 
succeeded  in  breaking  it,  fell  to  the  ground, 
too  weak  to  make  use  of  their  freedom. 
Behind  the  little  town  lay  the  tranquil  plains 
of  Western  Flanders,  a  fertile  land  of 
canals  and  farms  and  windmills,  and  far 


256  MONOLOGUES 

off  on  the  horizon  he  could  see  the  purple 
towers  of  Bruges. 

In  his  new  mood  of  holiday-maker  he 
looked  at  his  companions  in  the  town 
with  interest.  They  were  gay  and  cosmo- 
politan, and  seemed  to  have  been  making 
holiday  for  years.  The  grave  faces  of  the 
fishermen  contrasted  oddly  with  this  light- 
heartedness.  Perhaps  they  were  dreaming 
of  the  long  winter  months,  when  the  town 
was  their  own  and  only  good  Flemish 
was  heard  in  the  reticent  streets,  when  the 
North  Sea  roared  in  Flemish  against  the 
breakwaters,  that  murmured  now  in  con- 
versational French  to  please  the  children 
of  the  visitors.  The  fishermen  stood  apart 
in  silent  groups,  waiting  for  the  tide  to 
release  their  boats.  The  artist  would  have 
liked  to  talk  with  them,  but  he  knew  no 
Flemish. 

The  red  sun  set  into  the  sea,  the  laugh- 
ing crowd  split  into  families  and  went  in 
to  dinner,  and  the  artist  was  moved  by 
a  sudden  sense  of  loneliness.  Every  one 
in  the  place  seemed  to  be  gregarious.  The 
visitors,  the  fishermen,  even  inanimate 


A  SUMMER   HOLIDAY  257 

objects,  the  hotels,  the  boats,  and  the  bathing- 
machines,  formed  themselves  naturally  into 
flocks.  He  shivered  and  climbed  down  to 
the  beach  to  make  friends  with  the  sea. 

The  tide  came  in  rapidly  on  the  gently 
sloping  sands,  and  when  the  tongue  of  a 
ninth  wave  licked  his  boots  he  thought 
of  the  trusting  advances  of  a  large  and 
amiable  dog.  This  sea  was  a  tame  beast  that 
made  the  great  sea-wall  and  the  elaborate 
breakwaters  appear  ridiculous.  It  hardly 
had  the  force  to  overcome  the  sand-castles 
that  the  children  had  left  behind  them  to 
guard  the  deserted  beach,  and  in  its  gentle 
approach  it  brought  him  shy  presents  of 
fragile  shells  and  bunches  of  seaweed  like 
babies'  nosegays.  But  it  pressed  him  back 
foot  by  foot,  and  presently  the  swart  fishing  - 
boats  hoisted  their  sails  and  crept  out  one  by 
one  under  the  sky,  already  faintly  powdered 
with  stars.  An  orchestra  struck  up  a  waltz 
above  him  on  the  digue,  and  he  saw  that 
the  windows  of  the  hotels  were  blazing  with 
light,  and  that  the  guests  were  dancing  with 
the  shadows  of  the  esplanade. 

As  yet  he  was  content  to  taste  the  holiday 
17 


258  MONOLOGUES 

spirit  timidly,  for  it  seemed  to  him  strong 
drink  for  any  one  who  was  not  accustomed 
to  it.  A  man  may  not  learn  in  a  moment  to 
talk  aloud  to  strangers,  to  substitute  laughter 
for  thought,  to  dance  under  the  stars,  and  to 
patronize  the  sea.  So  the  artist  kept  himself 
on  the  fringe  of  the  crowd,  and  smiled 
encouragingly  to  himself  to  prove  that  he 
was  making  holiday.  It  would  be  pleasant, 
he  thought,  after  a  month  of  unsuccessful 
struggle,  to  be  merged  in  this  universal 
unconsciousness.  These  people  could  ex- 
press themselves  efficiently  by  doing  nothing 
at  all  ;  perhaps  he  could  win  the  secret 
of  their  joyous  self-satisfaction  in  a  place 
where  even  the  sea  was  only  a  blithely 
insignificant  tourist.  He  felt  the  passionate 
longing  of  every  artist  to  enjoy  life  for 
its  own  sake. 

When  the  orchestra  commenced  the 
seventh  waltz  he  left  the  dancers  and 
turned  inland  along  a  dusty  road  that 
stretched,  monotonously  level,  across  un- 
eventful fields.  The  night  had  not  succeeded 
in  enriching  this  dully  prosperous  plain 
with  her  mystery.  The  sparse  trees  did  not 


A  SUMMER   HOLIDAY  259 

bear  themselves  as  giants,  there  were  no 
mists  to  change  the  cropped  pasture-lands 
into  violet  lakes.  Every  dusty  twig,  every 
sandy  blade  of  grass  stood  revealed  as 
by  the  light  of  a  grey  November  day. 

And  then  he  came  up  to  a  great  flock 
of  sheep  that  was  grazing  its  way  along 
the  wide  grassy  borders  of  the  road.  He 
heard  their  teeth  tearing  the  tough  grass, 
and  the  barking  of  the  sheep-dogs  on  the 
skirts  of  the  flock.  Presently  he  overtook 
the  three  shepherds  with  their  long  poles 
and  coats  of  undressed  sheep-skin.  They 
pointed  aloft  and  cried  something  to  him 
in  Flemish,  and  following  their  gesture  he 
saw  a  red  light  high  up  in  the  sky. 
The  boys  had  sent  up  a  fire-balloon  from 
the  beach  below  the  town,  and  now  it 
had  dwindled  to  the  size  of  a  great  red 
star. 

The  artist  looked  at  the  sheep,  at  the 
three  shepherds,  at  the  new  star  that  shamed 
all  the  lesser  lights  of  heaven.  Then  he 
hurried  back  to  his  hotel,  and  started 
writing.  He  realized  that  in  a  life  so  short, 
in  a  world  that  at  every  turn  of  the  road 


260  MONOLOGUES 

could  prove  significant,  there  was  no  time 
to  cease  from  effort.  Below  him  on  the 
esplanade  the  orchestra  was  tuning  up  for 
the  fourteenth  waltz,  and  the  scrapings  of 
their  bows  disturbed  the  whispering  of 
the  gentle  sea.  His  holiday  was  over. 


XXX 


THIS  is  an  age  of  improving  literature. 
Messrs.  Shaw,  Galsworthy,  Chesterton, 
Kipling,  and  Masefield  have  already  improved 
us  considerably,  and  will  no  doubt  con- 
tinue to  do  so,  and  this  is  as  it  should 
be.  But  since  a  changeless  diet  of  lesson- 
books  is  unwholesome  for  the  literary 
student,  we  may  allow  ourselves  now  and 
again  to  rest  our  minds  with  that  kind  of 
literature  that  leaves  us  as  imperfect  as  it 
finds  us.  French  kickshaws  are  sweet  to 
the  palate  after  a  surfeit  of  your  funeral 
baked  meats,  and  it  is  probably  true  that 
the  demand  for  light  fiction  increases  as 
our  novelists  grow  more  serious.  I  doubt 
whether  I  should  have  enjoyed  my  catalogue 
of  bulbs  so  much  if  I  had  not  just  read  that 
depressing  masterpiece  "  Sister  Carrie." 

261 


262  MONOLOGUES 

It  supplied  my  mind  with  a  bridge  whereby 
to  pass  from  autumn  to  spring  without 
suffering  from  the  fogs  and  east  winds  and 
rainy,  muggy  nights  of  our  English  winter, 
and  fitly  enough  the  cover  was  adorned  with 
a  spring-like  picture  of  a  pretty  Dutch  girl— 
the  real  article,  and  not  the  creature  in  a 
striped  petticoat  that  prances  gracelessly  at 
English  music-halls.  Only  the  artist  had  not 
given  her  a  large  enough  mouth  to  satisfy 
my  craving  for  naturalism,  for  I  have  noticed 
that  in  the  Low  Countries  even  the  pretty 
girls  can  make  one  bite  of  an  apple.  The 
photographs  of  flowers  with  which  the  book 
was  illustrated  were  very  satisfactory,  for 
the  beauty  of  hyacinths  and  tulips  and  daffo- 
dils depends  on  their  form  rather  than  their 
colour,  and  they  lose  little  by  being  repro- 
duced in  black-and-white. 

But  even  better  than  the  photographs 
was  the  letterpress,  which  had  evidently 
been  written  by  a  Dutchman  with  an  equal 
enthusiasm  for  flowers  and  the  English 
tongue.  The  merits  of  his  prose  can  only  be 
illustrated  by  quotation  :— "  The  ubiquitous 
sparrow  is  the  gardener's  most  inveterate 


COMMERCIAL  LITERATURE  263 

enemy,  for  of  good  in  the  garden  he  does 
little  or  none,  while  of  irreparable  damage 
he  annually  does  much.  Sparrows  strip  our 
yellow  crocuses  of  their  petals.  Notwith- 
standing the  possibility  of  much  of  the  beauty 
being  destroyed  by  these  marauders,  it  is 
indefensible  to  omit  crocuses  from  the 
garden."  In  a  similar  spirit  he  cries, 
"  Can  any  one  imagine  what  our  gardens, 
greenhouses,  and  conservatories  would  be 
like  in  spring  if  we  had  no  tulips?  .  .  .  The 
dull  corner  is  enlivened  by  their  presence, 
and  the  bright  place  is  made  still  brighter." 
Moreover,  we  can  have  "  brilliant  effects 
without  putting  our  hand  into  our  pockets 
to  a  very  serious  depth."  How  kindly  and 
humanly  and  wisely  he  writes  of  miniature 
hyacinths  : — 

"  In  comparison  with  the  typical  Dutch 
hyacinth  it  is  fair  to  say  that  the  miniatures 
are  toys,  and  are  not,  therefore,  worthy  of 
serious  attention.  For  one  purpose  they  no 
doubt  have  a  substantial  value,  and  that  is 
for  children,  who,  while  small  themselves, 
may  prefer  a  small  rather  than  an  adult  bulb. 
This  is  a  phase  of  bulb -growing  that  might 


264  MONOLOGUES 

well  be  accorded  much  greater  encourage- 
ment, for  the  production  of  really  excellent 
miniature  hyacinths  is  well  within  the  powers 
of  the  little  ones,  whose  interest  in  flowers  is 
beyond  question  increased  when  they  can 
watch  the  progress  of  their  own  nurslings." 
With  daffodils,  as  he  reminds  us,  "  there 
is  a  beautiful  latitude  in  price."  We  can 
pay  "  thirty  guineas  for  some  highly  extolled 
novelty,  or  we  can  have  a  thousand  sound 
flowering  bulbs  for  as  small  a  sum  as  one 
and  a  half  guineas.  c  Common  ! '  some  one 
may  say.  Yes,  but  if  planted  in  the  grass 
in  the  wild  garden  or  the  woodland  they  will 
make  a  lovely  display."  It  is  difficult  to  stop 
quoting  a  man  who  can  write  of  the  leaves 
of  a  plant  "  showing  signs  of  going  to  rest," 
of  hardy  spring  flowers  that  "  make  their 
lovely  appearance  every  year,"  and  who  can 
describe  a  flower  "  amaranth  red  maroon 
stripes,  and  all  tigered  over  with  black."  Let 
us  leave  him  with  his  "  chaste  Poet's  Nar- 
cissus, which  is  beloved  of  everybody.  .  .  . 
Grow  them  by  hundreds  in  the  garden  and 
by  thousands  in  the  grass  of  the  woodland, 
and  their  beautiful  flowers  will  never  fatigue 
the  eye." 


COMMERCIAL  LITERATURE  265 

Incidentally  this  last  is  a  flower  that  I 
should  recommend  for  the  gardens  of  critics. 
In  the  course  of  my  wanderings  in  this 
charming  catalogue  I  have  found  other 
bulbs  that  should  also  appeal  to  the  catholic 
student  of  literature.  I  shall  search  his 
garden  next  spring  for  the  hyacinths  named 
after  Lord  Macaulay,  Charles  Dickens,  and 
Voltaire,  for  Alfred  Tennyson  and  Sir  Walter 
Scott  their  crocuses,  and  for  John  Davidson 
daffodils.  His  tulips  must  be  none  other 
than  your  "  tall  and  stately  Darwins,"  though 
perhaps  a  partial  exception  might  be  made 
in  favour  of  those  named  after  Thomas 
Moore.  In  this  way  flower-beds  might  be 
made  as  significant  as  a  man's  bookshelves. 

It  is  strange  how  poorly  an  English  cata- 
logue compares  with  these  enthusiastic  pages 
from  Holland.  The  home  product  is  better 
printed  and  the  photographs  are  better  repro- 
duced, but  the  letterpress  is  pedestrian,  and 
lacking  in  that  essential  quality  that  the  late 
Mr.  J.  M.  Synge  called  "joy."  It  cannot  be 
denied  that  the  English  tradesman  has  an 
extraordinary  contempt  for  considerations  of 
style.  The  moment  a  Frenchman  has  any- 


266  MONOLOGUES 

thing  to  sell  he  coins  a  phrase  about  it,  and 
nine  times  out  of  ten  the  phrase  is  poetical. 
During  the  recent  heat-wave  a  man  who  sold 
fans  in  the  streets  of  Paris  christened  them 
the  "  little  north  winds,"  a  flight  of  fancy  of 
which  a  London  street  hawker  is  certainly 
incapable.  Nor  does  the  catalogue  of  an 
English  bulb  importer  remind  me  of  Bacon's 
essay  on  gardens,  as  it  very  easily  might. 

Nevertheless  there  are  not  wanting  signs 
to  cheer  the  student  of  commercial  litera- 
ture. I  do  not  greatly  care  for  the  newer 
kind  of  advertising  that  apes  the  impertinent 
familiarities  of  a  deplorable  school  of 
journalism,  but  it  pleases  me  that  Messrs. 
Whiteley  should  persuade  me  to  buy  their 
rose-bushes  with  a  quotation  from  George 
Herbert.  It  is  even  more  delightful  that  the 
Underground  Railways  of  London  should 
invite  me  to  visit  Covent  Garden  or  the 
Imperial  Institute  by  means  of  a  quatrain 
of  FitzGerald's  "Omar."  The  application 
may  not  be  obvious  to  any  one  who  has  not 
seen  their  subtle  leaflet  entitled  "  The  Rose  " 
— indeed,  it  may  not  be  very  clear  to  those 
who  have — but  the  intention  of  this  and 


COMMERCIAL  LITERATURE  267 

similar  leaflets  is  excellent.  The  man  in 
the  Tube  should  feel  flattered  at  being 
approached  in  so  cultured  a  fashion. 

In  the  day  when  all  our  acknowledged 
writers  shall  have  become  preachers  or 
philosophers,  perhaps  the  young  men  with 
a  theory  of  beauty  and  no  theory  as  to  the 
economic  conditions  of  the  poor  will  be  per- 
mitted to  employ  their  perverse  gifts  in  the 
preparation  of  catalogues.  They  will  do  it 
very  well,  forming  new  unions  between 
adjectives  and  nouns,  and  ransacking  their 
souls  to  find  the  true  colours  and  shapes  of 
things.  The  catalogue  as  an  artistic  form 
hardly  exists  to-day,  but  it  is  certain  to  make 
its  appearance  sooner  or  later.  For  instance, 
there  is  no  reason  why  a  catalogue  of  fire- 
irons  should  not  be  as  emotionally  and 
artistically  significant  as  a  necklace  of  carved 
beads.  It  would  touch  on  the  natures  of 
metals — how  some  metals  are  able  to  resist 
fire,  while  others  preserve  a  polish  and 
charm  the  eye.  It  wTouid  quote  Mr.  Max 
Beerbohm's  essay  on  fire,  the  raging  animal 
that  we  keep  in  cages  in  our  houses,  and 
point  out  the  need  for  instruments  with 


268  MONOLOGUES 

which  to  awake  and  control  and  feed  this 
animal.  It  would  examine  the  characters 
of  men,  how  one  man  will  want  a  poker  like 
a  sword  while  another  will  want  a  poker 
like  a  ploughshare — if  such  a  poker  there 
be.  It  would  liken  the  tongs  to  the  hands 
of  a  miser,  and  the  shovel  to  a  beggar's  paw 
thrust  out  for  alms.  It  would  remind  the 
elderly  that  the  fireguard  round  the  nursery 
fire  is  a  lattice -window  through  which  young 
eyes  can  see  half  the  wonders  of  fairyland 
on  winter  nights,  fireships  and  palaces  of 
flame,  lurid  caverns  inhabited  by  goblins  with 
red  eyes  and  bodies  of  smoke.  Really,  it 
would  be  great  fun  to  write  a  catalogue 
like  that. 


XXXI 

A    MONOLOGUE    ON    LOVE-SONGS 

"  I  THINK  the  people  who  expect  you  to  make 
fine  poetry  out  of  motor-cars  and  the  tele- 
phone and  old  age  pensions  are  very  foolish, 
very  foolish  indeed.  It  never  has  been  done, 
it  never  will  be  done.  All  the  great  poetry 
of  the  world  has  been  concerned  with  birth 
and  love  and  death.  They  are  the  only  things 
significant  enough  for  so  rare  a  medium  of 
expression,  and,  of  course,  they  are  not  really 
worn  out  at  all.  They  are  new  every  day, 
every  hour.  It  is  not  because  of  that  that 
people  no  longer  read  poetry." 

He  stirred  his  glass  with  the  circular  turn 
of  the  wrist  that  pulls  the  heavy  grenadine 
up  through  the  soda-water.  The  lovers 
flocked  along  the  Boulevard,  walking  two  by 
two  as  if  they  were  already  bound. 

Ml 


270  MONOLOGUES 

'  Yes,  I  have  read  your  poems,  and  I 
thought  they  were  very  pretty.  Some  of 
them  seemed  to  me  to  have  been  felt ;  I  think 
you  must  have  been  in  love  with  something 
or  other  when  you  wrote  them.  But  what 
you  were  in  love  with — whether  it  was  a  girl 
or  an  idea  of  a  girl,  or  yourself,  or  some- 
thing that  you  had  found  in  a  book — I 
really  don't  know ;  and  that  is  my  criticism 
of  nearly  all  the  love-poems  that  have  ever 
been  written.  Oh,  I  know  that  you  speak 
of  her  lips  and  her  mouth  and  other  bits  and 
pieces  of  her  body — it  was  a  good  day  for 
poets  when  they  first  thought  of  doing  that— 
and  that  really  has  something  to  do  with 
love,  though  there  is  a  set  of  infamous  rascals 
who  pretend  it  hasn't.  But  it  isn't  all — when 
you  sum  up  the  emotional  units  that  compose 
a  love-affair,  you  will  find  that  it  is  only  an 
appreciable  fraction  of  the  whole.  It  is  the 
absence  of  the  other  elements  that  makes 
your  poetry  artificial." 

"  You  admit  that  it  isn't  all  when  you  fill 
up  your  poems  with  flowers  and  stars, 
despair  and  desire,  and  eternity  and  things  of 
that  sort.  The  necessity  is  disastrous,  for  it 


A   MONOLOGUE  ON   LOVE-SONGS     271 

makes  your  poems  inhuman,  and  love  is  the 
most  human  emotion  we  enjoy.  Yet  when 
the  lovers  come  to  you  for  news  of  your 
passion  you  give  them  only  a  geographical 
chart  of  your  mistress,  and  a  handful  of 
insignificant  symbols.  What  is  the  use  of 
these  to  Charles  with  his  increased  salary,  or 
Molly  with  her  new  muff?  They  know  that 
all  these  things  have  very  little  to  do  with 
love.  What  they  want  is  the  expression  of 
the  poet's  passion  conveyed  in  terms  that  they 
themselves  can  understand.  I  would  not 
make  it  the  final  test  of  poetry,  but  it  seems 
to  me  that  any  really  good  love -poem  should 
be  comprehensible  to  any  intelligent  lover 
.  .  .  without  Lempriere,  please  !  " 

"  Of  course  you  sin  in  good  company. 
Swinburne's  poems  are  often  called  erotic, 
but  their  passion  is  purely  intellectual,  and 
a  nation  that  was  dependent  on  the  first  series 
of  Poems  and  Ballads  for  their  knowledge  of 
love  would  die  of  inanition.  He  talks  to  a 
woman  and  a  statue  in  exactly  the  same  tone 
of  voice,  and  when  we  have  become  accus- 
tomed to  the  brilliance  of  his  technique  we 
realize  that  he  has  read  about  love  in  a 


272  MONOLOGUES 

naughty  Greek  book.  Most  of  you  young 
poets  end  by  creating  the  same  impression, 
except  that  we  feel  as  a  rule  that  you  have 
read  your  Greek  book  by  aid  of  a  crib." 

:<  What  I  want,  what  every  one  else  wants, 
is  evidence  that  you  were  in  love  with  a  real 
girl  in  a  real  world  when  you  wrote  your 
poems.  Then  they  become  interesting,  alive. 
But  the  conventions  that  you  have  borrowed 
from  other  poets  give  them  the  air  of 
academic  exercises :  they  are  pretty,  in- 
genious, what  you  will,  but  you  and  your 
large-eyed  lady  appear  only  as  discomfited 
ghosts  who  have  been  bitten  by  some  quaint 
mythological  insect  called  love.  You  must 
remember  that  nearly  everybody  has  been 
in  love  at  one  time  or  another,  and  that 
writers  of  love-poetry  must  be  prepared  to 
face  an  extraordinary  number  of  well-in- 
formed critics.  Well,  you  poets  make  love 
subtle,  remote,  mysterious,  while  all  the 
world  knows  everything  that  is  to  be  known 
about  it.  Nowadays  love  is  as  compre- 
hensible as  the  measles,  as  domesticated  as 
a  cat.  We  know  its  causes,  its  symptoms,  its 
consequences.  What  are  we  to  think  when 


A  MONOLOGUE   ON  LOVE-SONGS    273 

you  tell  us  of  starred  heavens  and  amethy- 
stine wings? " 

"  Listen  !  It's  no  good  dismissing  this  kind 
of  criticism  as  mere  philistinism.  In  love 
we  are  all  philistines  or  all  poets.  You  can't 
say  that  your  love  is  purer  or  more  aesthetic 
than  that  of  the  shopboy,  because  you  have 
voluntarily  accepted  the  conception  of  a 
universal  god,  shooting  his  arrows  with  a 
democratic  blindness  to  class  restrictions.  In 
effect  your  kisses  are  very  like  the  kisses  of 
ordinary  men.  It  is  not  only  poets  who 
appreciate  the  eyes  and  lips  and  bosoms  of 
their  mistresses,  and  so  far  you  are  justified 
in  regarding  this  as  an  important  aspect  of 
love.  But  there  are  other  aspects  no  less 
immediate  which  you  ignore  because  the 
other  poets  ignore  them." 

"  Look  out  there  under  the  trees  where  the 
young  men  and  women  are  walking  up  and 
down  in  pairs.  The  atmosphere  is  almost 
oppressive  with  love,  but  it  is  a  love  without 
wings,  without  arrows,  and  with  quick,  keen 
eyes.  If  you  were  attempting  to  give  a  prose 
impression  of  that  very  pleasant  parade,  I 
don't  think  that  you  would  write  about 

18 


274  MONOLOGUES 

eternity  or  the  petals  of  roses.  It  would  be 
far  more  to  the  point  to  write  about  the 
little  bags  the  girls  carry  on  their  wrists. 
In  every  one  of  them  there  is  change  for  ,a 
franc,  a  lace  handkerchief,  two  or  three 
letters,  and  a  small  powder-box  with  a  look- 
ing-glass lid.  They  look  in  the  glass  to  make 
sure  that  they  are  pretty  enough  to  meet  their 
lovers.  For  me  a  love-poem  ought  to 
resemble  one  of  those  little  bags  and  contain 
the  same  things.  Passion?  But  I  wager  the 
love-letters  are  passionate  enough,  my  friend. 
It  is  only  you  young  dreamers  who  try  to 
keep  passion  in  a  water-tight  compartment, 
away  from  the  ordinary  emotions  of  life.  In 
reality  it  is  always  mixed  up  with  powder, 
lace  handkerchiefs,  and  five -franc  pieces.  To 
think  that  in  all  your  hundred  love  poems 
you  have  not  once  spoken  of  money  !  " 

"  No,  I'm  not  being  cynical :  there  is  an 
economic  side  to  love  as  there  is  to  all  other 
human  relationships.  You  fall  in  love  with 
a  woman  much  richer  or  much  poorer  than 
yourself,  and  you'll  realize  that  only  too  well. 
And  the  looking-glass  element  enters,  too,  not 
only  for  the  woman  but  also  for  the  man. 


A  MONOLOGUE   ON   LOVE-SONGS    275 

Those  young  fellows  out  there  are  pleased 
enough  to  be  well  dressed,  and  of  course  a 
girl  in  a  new  hat  is  not  the  girl  one 
met  yesterday.  A  little  extra  peacockry  is 
one  of  the  commonest  symptoms  of  love — a 
natural  desire  to  look  one's  best  if  you  prefer 
it — but  you  haven't  a  word  to  say  about  it. 
But  when  it  is  lighting-up  time  for  glow- 
worms the  lanes  are  crowded  with  poets. 
Have  you  ever  seen  a  glow-worm?  Ugly 
little  beggars  they  are,  as  brittle  as  lizards. 
For  me  a  shop-assistant  in  his  new  brown 
boots  or  a  factory  girl  with  her  first  big 
hat  is  a  far  more  striking  spectacle  ;  that  is 
love's  livery  as  it  is  worn  by  human  beings, 
and  I  find  it  more  convincing  than  your 
armour  or  your  nasty  clinging  draperies. 
I  remember  once  seeing  a  telegraph-boy 
talking  to  a  girl  in  the  Strand,  and  being 
taken  aback  by  the  sight  of  his  smooth  young 
face  blazing  with  passion.  Now  the  only 
significant  thing  about  a  telegraph -boy  is  his 
uniform,  but  if  you  had  had  the  same  impres- 
sion as  I  had,  and  had  given  birth  to  one  of 
your  jDoems,  you  would  have  said  nothing 
about  his  uniform  and  would  probably  have 


276  MONOLOGUES 

called  him  vaguely  a  youth,  trailing  the 
hideous  chains  of  a  monstrous  civilization. 
With  the  best  will  in  the  world,  your  readers 
could  not  have  recaptured  your  impression. 
They  would  not  have  seen  what  I  saw :  the 
flushed,  eager  face,  the  desperate,  twitching 
hands,  leaping  out  of  a  wooden  body,  all 
straight  lines  like  a  child's  drawing  on  a 
slate.  They  would  not  have  seen  the  contrast 
between  his  crisped  fingers  and  his  inflexible 
belt,  between  his  polished  boots  and  his  face 
dabbled  with  splotches  of  colour  and  shades 
of  perspiration.  You  sacrifice  all  the  beauty 
of  your  impressions  to  the  immediate  beauty 
of  words  or  to  conventional  standards  of 
sestheticism." 

"  That  is  why  flesh-and-blood  lovers  laugh 
at  you  when,  grown  too  old  for  poetry,  you 
turn  critic  and  say  that  all  the  possible  love- 
poems  have  been  written.  As  a  matter  of 
fact  poets  have  hardly  started  to  write  about 
love  yet.  A  few  phrases  of  Shakespeare's 
on  jealousy,  a  few  fine  moments  of  Robert 
Browning — odd  how  the  most  commonplace 
of  poet-lovers  knew  more  about  love  than 
the  whole  row  of  passionate  singers — a  hand- 


A  MONOLOGUE  ON  LOVE-SONGS    277 

ful  of  old  s.ongs,  a  little  Burns,  and  what's 
left  beside?  Meredith  tried,  but  when  he 
treats  of  love  he  fails  at  the  poetry.  So  does 
Coventry  Patmore,  who  might  have  made  a 
fine  thing  of  the  '  Angel  in  the  House  '  if  a 
course  of  modern  French  novels  had  taught 
him  to  distinguish  between  his  real  emotions 
and  the  emotions  he  thought  he  ought  to  feel. 
To-day  there's  A.  E.  Housman  with  his 
'  Shropshire  Lad.'  I  may  have  forgotten 
something,  but  it  seems  to  me  that  that  is  the 
only  book  of  English  love-poetry  which  an 
intelligent  woman  would  not  find  silly  and 
high-falutin.  And  remember  that  if  at  the 
disillusioned  end  we  come  to  believe  that 
love  is  a  masculine  emotion  rather  than 
feminine,  the  women  always  understand  it 
better  than  the  men.  If  they  only  knew  how 
to  write,  what  love -songs  they  would  give 
us  !  Sappho  is  still  there,  with  all  her  yearn- 
ing songs  that  the  careless  centuries  have 
mislaid." 

"  What  we  all  want  now  is  a  poet  big 
enough  to  throw  overboard  the  conventional 
knick-knacks,  the  new  art  vocabulary,  the 
tight-laced  metres,  the  Birmingham  relics  of 


278  MONOLOGUES 

dead  ages  with  which  you  j^oungsters  are 
cumbered,  like  the  White  Knight  in  '  Alice 
through  the  Looking-Glass.'  Of  course  it 
isn't  easy.  Walt  Whitman  was  a  big  man, 
but  he  threw  the  poetry  overboard  as  well, 
and  only  the  born-deaf  and  the  mentally 
deficient  can  call  the  American  Rousseau  a 
poet.  .  .  ." 


XXXII 
CONVERSATIONAL  MISERS 

IN  our  experience  modern  writers  do  not 
shine  in  conversation  as  did,  if  we  are  to 
believe  their  contemporaries,  the  great  men 
of  the  past.  Nowadays  the  great  novelist 
speaks  dryly  about  copyright  and  censor- 
ship, the  great  poet  talks  about  his  dinner, 
and  after  an  evening  spent  in  their  society 
we  must  fall  back  on  Stevenson's  essay 
"  Talk  and  Talkers  "  if  we  wish  to  preserve 
the  conviction  that  conversation  can  be  an 
art. 

Our  modern  Johnsons  make  whale-like 
noises  only  in  their  articles,  and  our  modern 
Goldsmith — but  we  have  no  modern  Gold- 
smith— would  talk  like  poor  Poll  in  recurring 
volumes  of  reminiscences.  To  sparkle  in 
conversation  is  now  the  mark  of  literary 
mediocrity,  and  our  great  men  unpack  their 

279 


280  MONOLOGUES 

hearts  in  words  in  their  notebooks  and  in 
their  private  diaries  written  for  publication. 
Perhaps  they  are  not  so  lavishly  provided 
with  good  things  as  their  illustrious  for- 
bears, and  cannot  afford  to  be  generous ; 
perhaps  they  are  afraid  of  appearing 
arrogant  to  lesser  minds  that  may  not 
sparkle  ;  but  it  is  certain  that  the  present- 
day  hero -worshipper  must  expect  to  find  his 
hero  reticent.  Possibly  if  washerwomen 
could  read  shorthand  they  would  find  the 
souls  of  these  thrifty  giants  expressed  on 
their  cuffs  ;  we  who  have  spent  an  evening 
in  their  unimpressive  society  can  only  say 
that  we  have  heard  no  word  of  them. 

Of  course  there  are  rare  exceptions,  but 
we  fancy  that  few  people  would  be  found  to 
contend  that  this  is  an  age  of  accomplished 
talkers.  Yet,  if  we  are  not  strangely  inferior 
to  our  ancestors,  we  must  suppose  that  the 
spirit  that  they  expressed  in  talk  now  finds 
another  outlet.  Perhaps  every  other  man 
we  meet  is  a  mute  and  glorious  Pepys,  or  it 
may  be  that  the  modern  taste  for  writing 
works  of  fiction  marks  the  thankless  doom 
of  our  lost  conversationalists.  At  all  events, 


CONVERSATIONAL  MISERS          281 

in  support  of  the  theory  that  men  and  women 
write  the  things  that  once  upon  a  time  they 
would  have  been  satisfied  with  saying,  an 
agreeable  piece  of  evidence  lies  under  our 
hand. 

It  takes  the  form  of  three  fat  red  note- 
books filled  with  the  handwriting  of  a  man 
who  prided  himself,  we  should  infer,  on  its 
almost  painful  neatness.  He  was  a  school- 
master, one  of  those  luckless  schoolmasters 
who  do  not  find  boys  sympathetic,  and 
wander,  the  dreariest  of  exiles,  through  the 
wastes  of  school-life.  Throughout  this  mass 
of  unconnected  notes — for  his  respect  for 
form  did  not  extend  beyond  occasional 
phrases — his  references  to  his  pupils  are 
almost  without  exception  gloomy.  He  finds 
his  boys  lazy,  ill-mannered,  snobbish,  and 
normally  so  untruthful  that  he  repeatedly 
makes  the  fatal  mistake  of  disbelieving  their 
assertions  when  they  happen  to  be  true. 
Because  of  this  lack  of  justice  the  boys  called 
him  Jeffries  behind  his  back,  and  he  notes 
the  fact  without  comment.  Yet,  like  many 
people  who  do  not  like  boys,  he  was  evi- 
dently passionately  fond  of  children,  and 


282  MONOLOGUES 

sweetens  his  pages  with  strange  little  notes  of 
their  ways.  "  Babies  eat  their  bread-and- 
butter  upside  down,  in  order  to  taste  the 
butter."  "  When  children  are  sent  to  bed 
early  they  make  up  their  minds  not  to  go  to 
sleep  ;  when  they  are  lying  awake  in  bed 
they  try  to  see  how  many  they  can  count/' 
"  When  it  is  snowing  the  children  walk  along 
with  their  tongues  out  to  catch  the  flakes." 
"  Nelly  hoards  her  new  pennies  until  they 
are  quite  brown  and  spoiled  ;  this  is  the  true 
parable  of  the  talents."  "  I  have  to  win  the 
affections  of  children  with  sweets  and  little 
presents.  Others  can  do  it  without  this." 
Against  these  we  can  only  set  one  human 
observation  on  his  pupils :  "  There  is  an 
oddity  in  boys :  Simmons  played  truant 
yesterday  to  play  schools  with  his  cousins." 

It  will  be  seen  that  our  schoolmaster  cuts  a 
not  unamiable  figure  in  his  note-books,  in 
spite  of  the  fact  that  as  a  master  he  clearly 
erred  on  the  side  of  severity.  He  was,  we 
may  venture,  a  lonely  sort  of  man  separated 
from  his  fellows  by  a  gulf  of  shyness,  cer- 
tainly disillusioned  and  certainly  possessed 
of  vague  literary  ambitions.  Probably  his 


CONVERSATIONAL  MISERS          283 

note-books  were  intended  to  provide  materials 
for  some  half -conceived  masterpiece,  for  here 
and  there  we  can  see  him  striving  after  the 
finished  phrase.  Yet  often  enough  he  has 
merely  jotted  down  the  heads  of  his  thought, 
the  roughest  outline  of  his  impression,  so 
that  we  who  lack  the  key  seek  in  vain  for  his 
meaning.  Even  when  the  sense  is  clear,  we 
feel  sometimes  that  a  link  is  missing  between 
the  writer  and  the  written  word.  "  After 
a  certain  age  it  is  very  necessary  that  our 
dreams  should  be  good  to  eat,"  is  a  super- 
ficial cynicism  that  hardly  fits  his  character 
as  we  have  conceived  it.  And  this  :  "  When 
we  found  him  in  the  snow  his  clothes  and 
hair  were  stiff  with  frozen  beer  ;  when  we 
lifted  him  it  sounded  as  though  his  bones 
were  breaking  "  :  is  it  a  reminiscence  or  the 
climax  of  a  tale?  We  scan  the  next  item  on 
the  page  for  an  answer,  and  find  only  the 
poignant  cry,  "  How  can  I  stop  the  barber 
blowing  down  my  neck?"  As  an  artistic 
form  these  note -books  are  perplexing. 

The  most  coherent  section,  nearly  a  whole 
note-book,  is  devoted  to  his  notes  of  a  holiday 
in  Paris ;  but  he  has  hardly  escaped  the 


284  MONOLOGUES 

conventional  discoveries  that  reward  all  in- 
experienced travellers.  Here  and  there,  how- 
ever, his  individuality  crops  up.  He  saw  a 
blind  man  in  the  street  "who  looked  as  if 
he  saw  strange  sights  in  another  world,"  and 
a  drunken  man  in  a  cafe"  who  raised  his  hat 
before  the  bar  "  as  before  an  altar."  He 
examines  the  Monna  Lisa,  and  decides  that 
she  is  not  smiling,  and  allows  the  Venus  to 
convince  him  of  the  ugliness  of  human  arms. 
"  To  travel  abroad,"  he  notes,  "  is  like  visiting 
the  houses  of  a  number  of  people  whom  one 
does  not  know  very  well — a  trial  for  a  shy 
man."  "The  motor-cars  pass  this  hotel  like 
a  roaring  wind,"  he  writes  conventionally 
enough,  and  then  gives  us  an  astonishing 
portrait  of  the  proprietor  :  "  His  thick  lower 
lip  gleams  like  a  wet  cherry  between  his 
moustache  and  his  beard."  There  is  a 
picturesque  touch  about  the  grisettes  "  strug- 
gling with  great  bundles  of  linen  as  with 
drunken  lovers,"  and  then  we  come  on  an 
impression  that  lacks  the  revealing  word : 
"  The  people  in  the  windy  streets  are  like 
heroes  on  Japanese  prints."  Doubtless  he 
had  seen  something,  but  he  has  not  told  us 
what  he  had  seen. 


CONVERSATIONAL  MISERS          285 
Vcrv  few  of  his  notes  are  concerned  with 

*/ 

literature,  but  evidently  he  read  a  few  French 
books  while  he  was  in  Paris.     He  suggests 
that  Dumas  modelled  the  famous  escape  from 
the    Chateau    d'lf    on    Casanova's     equally 
famous  escape  from  the  prison  of  the  Plombs, 
and  on  Zola's  "  CEuvre  "  he  writes  :  "  It  would 
seem  that  the  clearer  the  artist's  vision  the 
more    certain    it   is    that   he   will    never   do 
anything    permanently    satisfactory    to    him- 
self," which  goes  to  confirm  the  theory  that 
he  himself  has  literary  dreams.     It  is  typical 
of  his  method  that  he  follows  this  reflection 
with  the  note,  "To-day  I  saw  a  man  whose 
waistcoat    pockets    were    so    large    that    his 
hands   disappeared   in   them   entirely."     We 
are  possibly  wrong,  but  it  is  difficult  to  avoid 
the  impression  that  the  odd   abruptness   of 
his  journal  reflected  a  certain  mental  inco- 
herence.    On  one  page  we  find  a  quotation 
from    Isabelle    Eberhardt    on    happiness,    a 
memorandum    that   the   Charing   Cross-road 
smells  of  raspberry  jam  and  hot  vinegar,  a 
paradox    on    cowardice — "  a    man    may    be 
afraid  of  blows,  yet  his  moral  cowardice  may 
set  him  fighting  with  a  stout  face  " — and  the 


286  MONOLOGUES 

extraordinary  comment,  "  P—  hates  me 
because  I  challenge  the  luxury  of  his  grief." 

There  is,  too,  a  curious  mental  contrari- 
ness about  the  man  that  makes  his  character 
difficult  to  grip.  It  was  not  modesty  that 
led  him  to  write  :  "  There  are  days  on  which 
the  lowness  of  the  clouds  incommodes  me  and 
makes  me  feel  cramped,"  yet  a  page  later 
we  find  him  writing  humbly  :  "  Ibsen  says 
that  the  majority  is  always  wrong,  but  I  must 
try  to  remember  that  the  minority  is  not 
always  right,"  and  in  a  still  darker  mood, 
"  I  would  like  to  exchange  all  my  thrills  and 
passions  for  a  life  without  desire,  without 
hope,  and  without  regret."  At  times  he 
realized  that  he  was  in  the  wrong  minority, 
poor  man  ! 

We  have  lingered  over  these  note-books 
partly  because  they  are  interesting  in  them- 
selves and  partly  because  they  supply  a  good 
instance  of  the  harm  people  do  themselves 
in  being  reticent.  It  is  clear  that  the  writer 
was  a  man  with  a  serious  turn  of  mind 
coupled  with  an  odd,  individual  outlook  on 
life,  and  failing  the  society  of  his  likes  he 
expressed  himself  only  in  notes  written  for 


CONVERSATIONAL   MISERS  287 

his  own  eyes,  which  is  no  kind  of  expression 
at  all.  For  lack  of  impulse  from  without, 
such  an  impulse  as  we  can  all  find  in  good 
talk,  our  disillusioned  schoolmaster  waned 
at  the  end  to  silent  nothingness.  He  hardly 
even  survives  in  his  note-books,  for,  as  we 
have  said,  a  large  part  of  his  notes  are  now 
meaningless.  He  is  like  one  of  those  misers 
in  whose  coffers  the  impatient  heirs  find 
nothing  but  withered  leaves,  the  fairies,  who 
do  not  like  misers,  having  substituted  the 
sweepings  of  the  forest  for  the  sweepings 
of  the  city.  In  his  lifetime  he  hoarded  the 
little  treasures  of  his  mind  instead  of  sending 
them  out  to  win  interest,  and  now  his  notes 
crumble  to  dust  and  all  his  new  pennies 
are  spoiled  and  brown.  Greater  men  than 
he  are  making  the  same  mistake. 


tTbc  Orcsb.im 

UNWIN  BROTHERS,  LIMITED, 
WOKING  AND  LONDON. 


University  of  California 

SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  «-«BRARY  FACILITY 

405  Hilgard  Avenue,  Los  Angeles,  CA  90024-1388 

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